Moths

MOTHS

OUIDA’S NOVELS.

Libi'ary edition^ crown cloth extm^ 5-y* cacJu
•HELD IN BONDAGE.

STRATHMORE.

CHANDOS: A Novel.

UNDER TWO FLAGS.

IDALIA : A Romance.

CECIL CASTLEMAINE’S GAGE.
TRICOTRIN.

PUCK ; His Vicissitudes, Adventures, etc.
FOLLE FARINE.

A DOG OK I'XANDERS.

PASCAREL : Only a Story.

TWO LITTLE WOODEN SHOES.
SIGNA.

IN A WINTER CITY.

ARIADNE.

FRIENDSHIP.

Alsff a cheaj> edition, fosi 8vo,f illustrated boards,

2 S. each. '

CIMTTO 6 - WINDUS, riCCADILLY, W.

MOTHS

Cv OUIDA

Author of ‘'tuck,’* “ tricotrin,” stratiimore,” etc.

Like unto moths fretting a garment.” — Psalm

A NEW EDITION

Honiron

CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY

1880

\AU rights reserved]

TO

MY OLD FEIEND

ALGERNON BOETIIWICK

UI MEMORY OF THE DAY! OF

«PUCK»'

AKE AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF AN

UNCHANGED REGARD

Le mondo aime le vice et hait Tamour ; le vice est un
bon enfant, un viveur, un drCle, un gourmet j il tienfc
bonne tabje, et vous invite souvent ; Tamour, au contrairo,
est un pedant, un solitaire, un misanthrope, un va-nu-
pieda; il ne vous amuse pas; vous oricz vito, la
lanterne 1 ” — Bivabez.

M O PH S

CHAPTER 1.

Lady Dolly ought to have been perfectly happy. She had every-
thing that can constitute the joys of a woman of her epoch.

She was at Trouville. She had won heaps of money at play.
She had made a correct book on thc^ races. She had seen her chief
rival looking bilious in an imbocoming gown. She had had a letter
from her husband to say he was going away to Java or Jupiter or
somewhere indefinitely. She wore a costume which had cost a
great tailor twenty hours of anxious and continuous reflection.
Kothing but hapMe indeed 1 but hapiiste sublimised and apotheo-
sised by niellb buttons, old l^ce, and genips. She had her adorers
and slaves grouped about her. She had found her dearest friend
out in cheating at cards. She had dined the night before at the
Maison Persanne and would dine this night at the Maison Nor-
mande. She haetbeen told a state secret by a minister which she
knew it was shameful of him to have been coaxed and chaffed into
revealing. She had had a new comedy read to her in manuscript-
form three months before it would be given in Paris, and had
screamed at all its indecencies in the choice company oj a Serene
Princess and two ambassadresses as they all took their chocolate in
their dressing-gowns. Above all, she Was at Trouville, having left
half a million of debts behind her strewn about in all directions, and
standing free as air in gossamer garments on the planks in the
summer sunshine. There was a charming blue sea beside her ; a
balmy fluttering breeze around her, a crowd of the most fashionable
sunshades of Europe before her, like a bed of full-blown anemones.
She had floated and bobbed and swum and splashed semi-nude,
with all the other mermaids d la mode, and had shown that she
must still be a pretty woman„prctty even in daylight, or the men
would not have looked at her so : and yet with all this she was not
enjoying herself.

It was very hailli

The yachts came and went, the sands glittered, the music
sounded, men and women in bright-coloured stripes took headers

B

2

MOTES.

into the tide or pulled themsclveft about in little canoes ; Jhe snowy
canvas of the tent shone like a huge white miishroomf and the
faces of all the houses were lively with green shutters and awninj^
brightly striped like the bathers; people, the gayest and best-born
people in Europe, laughed and chattered, and made l<?ve, and La(^
Dolly with them, pacing the deal planks with her pretty high-
heeled shoes ; but for all that she was wretched.

She was thinking to herself “ What on earth shall I dp with
her ^

It ruined her morning. It clouded the sunshine. It spelled
her cigarette. It made the watizes sound like dirges. It made her
chief rival look almost good-looking to her. It made a gown com-
bined of parrots’ breasts and passion-flowers that she was going to
wear in the afternoon feel green, and yellow, and bilious in her
anticipation of it, though it was quite now and a wonder. It
made her remember her debts. It made her feel that she had not
digested those ecrevisses at supper. It made her fancy that her
husband might not really go to Java or Jupiter. It was so sudden,
so appalling, so bewildering, so endless a question ; and Lady Dolly
only asked questions, she never answered them or waited for their
answers.

After all, what could she do with her ? She, a pretty woman
and a wonderful flirt, who liked to dance to the very end of the
cotillon, and had as many lovers as she had pairs of sdioes. What
could she do with a daughter just sixteen years old ?

“ It makes one look so old ! ” she had said to herself wretchedly,
as she had bobbed and danced in the waves. Lady Dolly was not
old ; she was not quite thirty-four, and she was as pretty as if she
were seventeen, perhaps prettier ; even when sCe was not “ done
up,” and she did not need to do herself up very much just yet, really
not much, considering, — well, considering so many things, that she
never went to bed till daylight, that she never ate anything digest-
ible, and^ never drank anything wholesome, that she made her
waist fifteen inches round, and destroyed her nerves with gambling,
chloral, and many other things ; considering these, and so many
other reasons, besides the one supreme reason that everybody docs
it, and that ydU always look a fright if you don’t do it.

The thought of her daughter’s impending arrival made Lady
Dolly miserable. Telegrams were such horrible things. Before
she had had time to realize the force of the impending catastrophe
the electric wires had brought her tidings that the girl was actually
on her way across the sea, not to be stayed by any kind of means,
and would be there by nightfall. Nightfall at Trouville 1 When
Lady Dolly in ihe deftest of summer-evening toilettes would be
just opening her pretty mouth for her first n^rsel of salmon and
drop of Chablis, with the windows oi)en and the moon rising on the
sea, and the card-tables ready set, and the band playing within
earshot, and the courtiers all around and at her orders, whether she

MOTHS. S

0

lifted to & out and dance, or sttky at homo for poker or cJiemin-
deafer. •

“ What in the world shall I do with her, Jack ? ” she sighed to
> her chief counsellor.

The chief counsellor opened his lips, answered, ‘^Jifarry her! ”
then dosed them on a big cigar.

“ Of course 1 One always marries girls ; how stupid you arc ! ''
said I#<'ly Dolly peevishly.

The counsellor smiled griml}’’, “ And then you will bo a grand-
mother,” he said with a cruel relish : be had just paid a bill at a
hric-Orhrac shop for her audit had left him unamiable.

“ I suppose you think that witty,” said Lady Dolly with deli-
cate contempt. Well, Hdl^nc there is a great-grandmother, and
look at her I ”

lleldne was a Prussian princess, married to a Pussiaft minister :
she was arrayed in white with a tender blending about it of all the
blues in creation, from that of a summer sky to that of a lapis
lazuli ring ; she had a quantity of foir curls, a broad hat wreathed
with white lilac and convolvulus, a complexion of cream, teeth of
pearl, a luminous and innocent smile; she was talking at the top
of her voice and munching chocolate ; she had a circle of young
men round her ; she looked, perhaps, if you wished to bo ill-natnrcd,
eight and twenty. Yet a great-grandmother she was, and the
Almanach de Gotha ” said so, and alas ! ^aid her age.

“ You won’t wear so well as Ildlenc. You don’t take care of
yourself,” the ccunsellor retorted, with a puff of smoke between
each sentence.

“What! ” screamed Lady Dolly, so that her voice rose above
the din of all the other voices, the sound of the waves, the click-
clack of the high heels, and the noise of the band. Not take care
of herself] — she! — who had every fashionable medicine that came
out, and, except at Tkouville, never would be awakene^ for any
earthly thing till one o’clock in the day.

“ You don’t take care of yourself,” ^aid the counsellor. “ No ;
you eat heaps of sweetmeats. You take too much tea, too much ice,
too much soup, too much wine ; too much everything. You ”

“ Oh I if you mean to insult me and call mo a drunkard—! ”
said Lady Dolly very hotly, flushing up a little,

** You smoke quite awfully too much,*' pursued her companion
immovably, It hurts us, and can’t be good for you. Indeed, all
you women would be dead if you smoked right ; you don’t smoke
right ; you send all your smoke out, chattering ; it never gets into
your mouth even, and so that saves you all ; if you drew it in, as
we do, you would be dead, all of you. Who was*the first woman
that smoked, I ofteif wonder ? ”

“ The idea of my not wearing as well as Helene,” pursued Lady
Dolly, unable to forgot the insult, “Well, there are five and
twenty years between us, thank goodness, and more ! ”

4 MOTHS.

I say you won’t,” said the ^counsellor, not if you^go on as
you do, screaming all night over those cards and takin^uarts of
chloral because you can’t sleep. Why can’t you sleep ? 1 can.”

All the lower animals sleep like tops,” said Jjady Dolly.
“You seem to have been reading medical treatises, and thiy
haven’t agreed with you. Go and buy me a ' Petit Journal.’/’

The counsellor went grumbling and obedient — a tall, good-
looking, well-built, and veiy fail* Englishman, who had shot^very-
thing that was shootable all over the known world. Lady Dolly
smiled serenely on the person jvho glided to her elbow, and took
the vacant place; a slender, pale, and graceful Frenchman, the
Due dc Dinant of the vieille souche.

“Dear old Jack gets rather a proscr,” she thought, and she
began to plan a fishing picnic with her little Duke ; a picnic at
which everybody was to go barefooted, and dress like peasants —
real common peasants, you know, of course, — and dredge, didn’t
they call it, and poke about, and hunt for oysters. Lady Dolly
had lovely feet, and could af^rd to uncover them; very few of
her rivals could do so, a fact of wdiich she took cruel advantage,
and from which she derived exquisite satisfaction in clear shallows
and rock pools. “ The donkeys I they’ve cramped themselves in
tight boots I ” she said to herself, with the scorn of a superior mind.
She always gave her miniature feet and arched insteps their natural
play, and therein displajrcd a wisdom of which it must be honestly
confessed, the rest of her career gave no glimpse.

The counsellor bought the “Petit Journal” and a ‘'Figaro”
for himself, and came back ; but she did not notice him at all. A
few years before the neglect would have made him miserable ; now
it made him comfortable — such is the ingratitude of man. He sat
down and read the “ Figaro ” with complacency, while she, under
her sunshade, beamed on Gaston de Dinant, and on four or five
others of^his kind ; youngsters without youth, but, as a comiDcn-
sation for the loss, with a perfect knowledge of Judic’s last song,
and Dumas* last piece, of the last new card-room scandal, and the
last drawing-room adultery ; of everything that was coming out
at the theatres, and of all that was of promise in the stables. They
were not in the least amusing in themselves, but the chatter of the
world has almost always an element of the amusing in it, because
it ruins so many characters, and gossips and chuckles so merrily
and so lightly over infamy, incest, or anything else that it thinks
only fun, and deals with such impudent personalities. At any
rate they amused Lady Dolly, and .her Due de Dinant did more ;
they arranged the picnic, — without shoes, that was indispensable,
without shoes, dnd in real peasant’s things, elso there would be
no joke — they settled their picnic, divorced half a dozen of their
friends, conjectured about another half-dozen all those enormities
which modem society would blush at in the Bible but, out of it,
whispers and chuckles over very happily; speculated about tho

MOmS. 5

0

few unha Spy unknowns who had tfared to enter the magic precincts
of these very dusty sands ; wondered with whom the Prince of
Wales would dine that night, and whose that new yawl was, that '
had been standing off since morning flying the II. Y. S. flag ; and
^nerally diverted one another so well, that beyond an occasional
passing spasm of remembrance, Lady Dolly had forgotten her im-
pending trial.

“ >think I will go in to breakfast,” she said at last, and got up.
It was one o’clock, and the sun was getting hot; the anemone-bed
began to heave and be dispersed ;»up and down the planks the
throng was thick still, the last bathers, peignoir-enwrapped, were
.sauntering up from the edge of the sea. The counsellor folded his
“ Figaro,” and shut up his cigar-case ; his was the useful but humble
task to go home before* her and see that the Moselle was iced, the
])rawns just netted, the strawberries just culled, and Ihe cutlets
duly frothing in their silver dish. The Due dc Dinant sauntered
by her with "no weightier duty than to gaze gently down into her
eyes, and buy a stephanotis or a knet of roses for her bosom when
they passed the flower-baskets.

“ What arc they all looking at?” said Lady Dolly to her escort
suddenly. Bodies of the picturesque parti-coloured crowd were all
streaming the .same way, inland towards the sunny white houses,
whose closed green shutters were all so attractively suggestive of the
shade and rest to be found within. But the heads of the crowd
were turning back seaward, and their eyes and eyeglasses all gazed
in the same direction.

Was it at the Prince? Was it at the President? Was it the
Channel fleet had hove in sight ? or some swimmer drowning, or
some porpoises, or what? No, it was a new arrival. A now arrival
was no excitement at Trouville if it were somebody that everybody
knew. Emperors were commonplace ; ministers were nonentities ;
marshals were monotonous ; princes were more numeronii than the
porpoises ; and great dramatists, great^ singers, great actors, great
orators, were all there as the very sands of the sea. But an arrival
of somebody that nobody knew had a certain interest, if only as
food for laughter. It seemed so queer that there should be such
pco]>le, or that existing, they should venture there.

“ Who is it ? ” said Trouville, in one breath, and the women
laughed, and the men stared, and both sexes turned round by
common consent.. Something lovelier than anything there was
coming through them as a sunbeam comes through dust. Yet it
wore nothing but brown hoHand! Brown holland at Trouville
may be worn indeed, but it is brown holland t^;ansfigured, subli-
mated, canonised, borne, like Lady Dolly’s haptistey into an apo-
theosis of eant l^ce and floss silk embroideries, and old point
cravats, and buttons of repoussd work, or ancient smalto ; brown
holland raised to the empyrean, and no more discoverable to the
ordinary naked eye than the original flesh, fish, or fowl lying at

6 MOTHS.

the roof of a good cook’s mayonViam is discernible to ike unedu-
cated palate.

But this was brown Lolland naked and not ashamed, unadorned
and barbaric, without any attempt at disguise of itselli and looking
wet and wrinkled from sea- water, and very brown indeed besi^
the fresh and ethereal costumes of the ladies gathered there, that
looked like bubbles just blown in a thousand hues to float upon
the breeze.

“ Brown Lolland ! good gracious 1 ” said Lady Dolly, putting up
her eyeglass. She could not very well sec the wearer of it ; tiiere
were so many men between them; *but she could see the wet,
clinging, tumbled skirt which came in amongst the wonderful
garments of the sacred place, and to make this worse there was an
old Scotch plaid above the skirt, not worn, thrown on anyhow, as
she said pathetically, long afterwards.

“ What a guy 1 ” said Lady Dolly.

" Wliat a face ! said the courtiers ; but they said it under their
breath, being wise in their generation, and praising no woman
before another.

But the brown holland came towards her, catching in the wind,
and showing feet as perfect as her own. The brown holland
stretched two hands out to licr, and a voice cried aloud —

“ Mother ! don’t you know me, mother ? ”

Lady Dolly gave a Jittle sharp scream, then stodd still. Tier
pretty face was very blank, her rosy small mouth was parted in
amaze and disgust.

“ In that dress ! ” she gasped, when the position became clear
to her and her senses returned.

But the brown holland was clinging in a wild and joyous kind
of horrible, barbarous way all about her, as it seemed, and the
old Scotch j)laid was pressing itself against her haptiste skirts.

“ Oh, mother 1 how lovely you are ! Not changed in the very
least! Don’t you know me. Oh dear! don’t you know me? I
am Yere.”

Lady Dolly was a sweet-tempered woman by nature, and only
made fretful occasionally by maids’ contretemps, debts, husbands,
and other disagreeable accompaniments of life. But, at this
moment, she had no other sense tlnxn that of rage. .She could
have struck her sunshade furiously at all creation; she could have
fainted, only the situation would have been rendered more ridi-
culous still if she had, and that consciousness sustained her ; the
sands, and the planks, and the sea, and the sun, all went round her
in a whirl of vp-ath. She could hear all her lovers, and friends,
and rivals, and enemies tittering ; and Princess Heldne Olgarouski,
who was at her shoulder, said in the pleasantest way —

^ ‘‘Is that your little daughter, dear? AVhy, she is quite a
woman ! A new beauty for Monseigneur.”

Lady Dolly could have shiin her hundreds in that moment, hiid

M0TH8. 7

her siinsriade but been of steel. ^To be made ridiculous ! There is
no more disastrous destiny under the sun.

^ The brown holland had ceased to cling about her, finding itself'
repulsed ; th^ Scotch plaid had fallen down on the plank ; there
vtfiVQ two brilliant and wistful eyes regarding her from above, and
one hand still stretched out shyly.

I am Vere ! ” said a voice in which tears trembled and held a
striigft^ with pride.

“ 1 see you arc 1” said Lady Dolly with asperity. What on
earth made you conic in this — thij — indecent way for — without
even dressing! I expected you at night. Is that Fraulein
Schroder ? Slic should be ashamed of hersedf.”

** I see no shame, Miladi,’^ retorted in guttural tones an injured
German, “ in that a long-absent and much-loving daughter should
be breathless to flee to embrace the one to whom she owes her
being ”

“Hold your tongue!” said Lady Dolly angrily. Fraulein
Schroder wore a green veil and blua spectacles, and was not beau-
tiful to the eye, and was grizzle-headed ; and the friends and
lovers, and courtiers, and enemies, were laughing uncontrollably.

“ What an angel of loveliness I But a woman ; quite a woman.
She must bo twenty at least, my dear?” said Princess Helene,
who always said the pleasantest thing she could think of at any
time.

“Vcrc is sixteen,” said Lady Dolly* sharply, much rufiied,
seeing angrily that the giiTs head in its sunburnt sailor’s hat, bound
with a black ribbon, was nearly a foot higher than her own, hung
down, though it now was, like a rose in the rain.

There w'as a person comiug up from his mile swim in the sea,
with the burnous-like folds cast about him more gracefully than
other men were able ever to cast theirs.

“ How do you manage to get so much grace out ofadqzcn yards
of bath towelling, Correze ? ” asked an Englishman who was with
him,

“ C*e8t mon metier a moi fTttre 'poseur,' said the other, para-
phrasing the famous saying of Joseph the Second.

“Ah, no,” said the Englishman, “you never poser ; that is
the secret of the charm of the thing. I feel like a fool in these
spadiUes and swathings ; but you — you look as if you had just
come up from a sacred river of the East, and are worthy to sing
strophes to a Nourmahal.”

“ Encore une fois — mon m4iier” said the other, casting some of
the linen folds over his head, which was exceedingly handsome,
and almost line for line like the young Sebastian o! Del Sarto. At
that moment he sa\f the little scene going on between Lady Dolly
and her daughter, and watched it from a distance with much
amusement.

“ What an exquisite face that child has,-^that lovely tint like

® M^TBS.

tho vild white rose, there is aofliing like it. It makd all the
women with colour look vulgar, " he said, after a prolotf^cd gaze
tdirough a friend’s field-glass. “Who is she, do yon sayV Miladi
Dolly’s daughter? Is it possible? I thought Milodi was made
herself yesterday in Giroux’s shop, and n’as kept in a wadded hoc
when her mechanism was not wound up. Surely, it is imjiossibJe
Dolly can ever have stooped to such a homely unartificial thing as
maternity. You must be mistaken."

“ No. In remote ages she married a cousin. The white wild
rose is the result.”

“ A cbarmiiig result. A child only, but an exquisite child. It
is a pity wo arc in this costume, or we would go and be j)resente(i ;
though Miladi would not be grateful, to judge by her face now.
Poor little Dolly ! It is hard to have a daughter — and a daughter
that comes* to Trouville in August."

Then he who was a figure of grace even in white towelling, and
had a face like Saint Sebastian, handed the field-glass back to his
friend, and went to his hotel ta dress.

Meanwhile Lady Dolly was saying irritably : “ Go home to my
liouse, Vere, — the Chrdet Ludoff. Of course you ought to have gone
there first ; why didn’t you go there first and dress f None but an
idiot would ever have allowed you to do it. The idea ! Walk on,
pray — and as quickly as you can."

“We went to the house, but they said you were on the beach,
and so, mother "

“ Pray don’t call me mother in that way. Tt makes one feel
like What’s-her-namc in the ‘ Trovatore/ " said Lady Dolly, with a
little laugh, that was very fretful. “ And be kind enough not to
stand here and stare; everybody is listening."

“What for should they not listen?” said Fraulcin Schroder
stoutly. “ Can there he in nature a sweeter, more soul-inspiring,
and of-heavcn-always-blessed emotion than the outcoming of filial
love and the spontaneous flow of ”

“ Rubbish I ’’ said Lady Dolly. “ Vere, oblige me by walking
in ; I shall be with you in a moment at the house. You’ll find
Jack there. You remember Jack ? " ’

“ What an angel ! any one would give her twenty years at least/-
said Princess llcldne again. “But your German, in her blue
glasses, she is a drolesse ”

“ A very clever woman ; dreadfully blue and conscientious, and
all that is intolerable ; the old duchess found her for me," replied
Lady Dolly, still half willing to faini, and half inclined to cry, and
wholly in that , state of irritation which Fuseli was wont to say
made swearing delicious.

“ I always fancied — so stuind of me ! — thaPyour Vere was quite
a little child, always at the Sacre Cceur," continued the Princess
musingly, with her sweetest smile.

“ I wish to heaven we had a Sacr4 Coeur," said Lady Dolly

MOTES. 9

. o

t3evoutlJ. “We wretched Enflish people have nothing half so
sensible* you know that, Helene, as well as I do. Vere is tall and
*Wery like her poor father and the old Duke.”

“But Vere — surely that is not the name of a girl?”

“ It was her father’s. That was the old duchess’s doing too.
Of course one will caliber Vera. Well, au rtvoir, ma tres chere, a
ce soirJ*

‘With nods and becks and \?reathcd smiles,” and many good-
days and pretty words, poor Lady Dolly got away from her
friends and her acquaintances, apd had the common luxury of
hearing them all begin laughing again as soon as they imagined she
had got out of earshot. Her young courtiei-s accompanied her, of
course, but she dismissed them on the doorstep.

“ 1 can’t think of Anything but my child to-day 1 ” she said very
charmingly. “So glad you think her nice-looking. When she is

dressed, you know ” and she disapj^eared into her own house

with the phrase unfinished, leaving all it suggested to her hearers.

“Where’s Vere?” she said sharply to her counsellor, entering
the breakfast-room, before the empty stove of which, from the
sheer fireplace club-room habit of his race, that 2 )erson stood
smoking.

“Gone to her room,” he answered. “You’ve made her cry.
You were nasty, weren’t you ? ”

“ I was Ifurious 1 You wouldn’t havQ been ? That vile dress 1
that abominable old woman ! And kissing mo too — me— on the
beach!”

Her companion smiled grimly.

“She couldn’t tell that one musn’t touch you when you’re
‘done up.’ You didn’t do up so much three years ago. She’ll
soon learn, never fear.”

“You grow quite horribly rude. Jack.”

He smoked serenely.

“ And quite too odiously coarse.”

He continued to smoke.

She often abused him, but she could never do without him ; and
he was aware of that.

“ And what a height she is ! and what her gowns will cost I
and she must come out soon — and that hoirid Helene ! ” sobbed *
Lady Dolly, fairly bursting into tears. She had been so gay and
comfortable at I'rouville, and now it was all over. ‘ What comfort
could there be with a girl nearly six feet high, that looked twenty
years old when she was sixteen, and who called her “ Mother I ”

“ Don’t make a fuss,” said the counsellor from^the stove. “ She’s
very handsome, awfully pretty, you'll marry her in no time, and
be just as larky as*you were before. Don’t cry, there’s a dear little
■soul. Look here, the cutlets are getting cold, and there’s all these
mullets steaming away for nothing. Come and eat, and the thing
•won’t seem so terrible.”

10 MOTHS.

Being versed in the ways of co!isolations, he opened a lottle of
Moselle with an inviting rush of sound, and let the goldeft stre«'im
foam itself softly over a lump of ice in a glass. Lady Dolly looked
up, dried her eyes, and sat down at the tabic.

** Vere must be hungry, surely,” she said, with a sudden re-«
mcmbrance, twenty minutes later, eating her last morsel of a
truffled timhdlc.

The counsellor smiled grimly.*

“ It's rather late to think about that ; I sent her her breakfast
before you came in.”

“ Dear me ! how very fatherly of you 1 ”

The counsellor laughed. “ I feel like her father, I assure you.’^

Lady Dolly coloured, and lit a cigarette. She felt that she
would not digest her breakfast. Henceforth there would be two
bills to pay — the interest of them at any rate — at all the great
tailors' and milliners’ houses in Paris and London ; she had an un-
easy sense that to whirl in and out the mazes of the cotillons, or
smoke your cigarette on the smooth lawns of shooting-clubs, vis-^-
vis with your own daughter, was a position, in the main, rather
ridiculous ; and she had still an uneasier conviction that the girl in
tlio brown holland would not be taught in a moment to compre-
hend the necessity for the existence of Jack — and the rest.

“ That horrid old duchess ! ” she murmured, sinking to sleep
with the last atom of her cigarette crumbling itself dway on the
open page of a French novel. For it was the duchess who had sent
her Vere.

CHAPTER 11.

Lady Douotut Vanderdecken, who was Lady Dolly to every-
body, down to the very boys that ran after her carriage in the
streets, was the seventh daughter of a very poor peer, the Earl of
Caterham, who was a clever politician; but always in a chronic
state of financial embarrassment. Lady Dolly had made a very
silly love-match with her own cousin, Vere Herbert, a younger son
of her uncle the Duke of Mull and Cantire, when she was only
seventeen, and he had just left Oxford and entered the Church.
But Vere Herbert had only lived long enough for her to begin to get
very tired of his country parsonage in the wilds of the Devonshire
moors, and to bo left before she was twenty with a miserable pit-
tance for her portion, and a little daughter twelve months old to
]>lague her farther. Lady Dolly cried terribly hr a fortnight, and
thought she cried for love, when she only cried for worry. In
another fortnight or so she had ceased to cry, had found out that
crape brightened her pretty tea-rose skin, had discarded her baby

MOTHS. 11

. ®

to the care of her aunt and naotlier-in-law, the old and austere
Duchesi^of Mull, and had gone for her health with her own gay
Jittle mother, the Countess of Catcrham, to the south of France^
111 the sout^ of France Lady Dolly forgot that she had ever cried
^t all; and in a year’s time from the loss of Yere Herbert had
married herself again to a Mr. Vandenlccken, an Englishman of
Dutch extraction, a rich man, of no rcniarkabb lineage, a financier,
a contractor, a politician, a very Restless creature, always rushing
about alone, and never asking any questions — wdiich suited her.
On the otlier hand it suited him to ally himself with a score of
great families, and obtain a lovely and high-born wife ; it was
one of those marriages which cvciybod}^ calls so sensible, so suit-
able, so very nice ! Quite unlike the marriage with poor Yere
Herbert, wbicli everybody had screamed at, as they had not made
up five hundred a year in income, or forty-five years in •age hetweer.
them.

Lady Dolly and Mr. Yandcrdecken did not perhaps find it so
])(Tfectly well assorted when they,had had a little use of it ; she
thought him stingy, he thought her frivolous, but they did not tell
anybody else so, and so everybody always said that the marriage
w\as very nice. They were always seen in the Bois and the Bark
together, and always kept house together three months every spring
in London; they went to country houses together, and certainly
dined out together at least a dozen times every season : nothing
could be nicer, Lady Dolly took care of that.

She thought him a great bore, a great screw; she never had
enough money by half, and ho was sometimes very nasty about
cheques. But he was not trouhlcsomc about anything else, and
was generally head over ears in some wonderful loan, or contract,
or subsidy, which entailed distant journeys, and absorbed him
ciitiroly; so that, on the whole, she was content and enjoyed
herself.

This morning, however, she had gone down to the shore not
indeed fully anticipating such a blow -as had fallen upon her, but
ruffled, disgusted, and nervous, conscious that her daughter was
travelling towards her, and furious with the person she termed a
“ horrid old cat.^’

The old cat was the now dowager Duchess of Mull, who for
fifteen years had kept safe in Northumbria the daughter of poor
Yere, and now had hurled her like a cannon-ball at Lady Dolly’s
head in this hideous, abominable, unforeseen manner, straight on
the sands of Trouvillc, in sig\^t of that snake in angel’s guise, the
ITinccsse Helene Olgarouski I

Lady Dolly, who never would allow that She gave up her
maternal rights, tlfough she would never be bored with matcrixul
responsibilities, had quarrelled for the nine-hundredth time (by
post) with the Duchess of Mull; quarrelled desperately, impu-
dently, irrevocably, quarrelled once too often ; and the result of the-

12

MOTES.

quarrel had been the instant despatch of her daughter to Trouville,
with the duchess’s declaration that she could struggle foiwthe soul

her poor son’s child no longer, and that come what would, she,
consigned Vere to her mother then and for ever more.

“ 'J'he horrid woman will be howling for the child again in ^
week’s time,” thought Lady Dolly, “ but she has done it to spits
me, and I’ll keep the child to sihtc her. That’s only fair.”

The duchess had taken her atf lier w^ord, that w^as all ; bul^thcn,
indeed, there are few things more spiteful that one can do to any-
body than to take them at their word. Lady Dolly had been
perplexed, irritated, and very aiigry with herself for having written
all that rubbish about suffering from the unnatural deprivation of
her only child’s society ; rubbish which had brought this stroke of
retribution on her head.

She had' pulled her blonde 'perrugiie all awry in her vexation;
she did not want that i)evruqm at all, for her o\vn hair was thick
and pretty, but she covered it up and wore IhcjperrM^Me because it
was the fashion to do so. ^

Lady Dolly had always been, and was very pretty : she had
lovely large eyes, and the tiniest mouth, and a complexion which
did not want all the pains she b('stowed on it ; when she had not
the ^erruque on, she had dark silky hair all tumbled about over
her eyebrows in a disarray that cost her maid two hours to com-
]iose; and her eyebrows themselves were drawn beautifully in two
line, dark, slender lines by a pencil that supplied the one defect of
Nature. When she W’as seventeen, at the rectory, amongst the
rosebuds on the lawn, she had been a rosebud herself; now she was
a Dresden statuette; the statuette was the more finished and
hiilliant beauty of the two, and never seemed the worse for wear.
This is the advantage of artificial over natural loveliness ; the latter
•will alter wdtli health or feeling, the former never ; it is always the
same, unless you come in at its toilette, or see it when it is very ill.

Lady Dolly this morning woke up prematurely from her sleep,
and fancied she was in the old parsonage gardens on the lawn,
amongst the roses in Devonshire, with poor Verc’s pale handsome
face looking down so tenderly on hers. She felt a mist before her
eyes, a tightness at her throat; a vague and worried pain all over
Her. “ It is the prawns ! ” she said to herself, “ I will never smoke
after prawns again.”

She was all alone ; the counsellor had gone to his schooner,
other counsellors were at their hotels, it was an hour when every-
thing except Englishmen and dogs w;ero indoors. She rose, shook
her muslin breakfast-wrapper about her impatiently, and went to
SCO her daughter. ^

“He used to be so fond of me, poor fellow I” she thought.
Such a pure fond passion then amongst the roses by the sea. It
had all been very silly, and he had used to bore her dreadfully with
Ivchle, and his namesake, George of holy memory, and that old

MOTES. IS

C'

proser Thomas S.-Kempis ; but it had been a different thing to
all thes(f other loves. He lay in his grave there by the Atlantic
^«mongst the Devon roses, and she had had no memory of him fof
many a yeas, and when -he had been alive, she had thought the
•liurch and the old women, and the saints, and the flannel, and the
clioral services, and the matins- and vesper-nonsense, all so tiresome ;
but still he had loved her. Of course the}'’ all adored her now, heaps
of th^ — but his love had been different thing to theirs. And
somehow Lady Dolly felt a tinge and twinge of shame.

“ Poor Vere,” she murmured tq herself tenderly ; and so went
to sec his daughter, who had been called after him by that absurd
old woman, the Duchess of Mull, with whom Lady Dolly in her
dual relation of niece and daughter-in-law had always waged a
fierce undying war: a war in which she had now got the worst
of it.

** May I come in, dear ? ” she said at the bed- chamber door.
She felt almost nervous. It was very absurd, but why would the
girl have her dead father’s eyes ? •

The girl opened the door and stood silent.

'' A beautiful creature. They are quite right,” thought Lady
Dolly, now that her brain was no longer filled with the dreadful
rumpled brown holland, and the smiling face of Princess Helene.
^J'hc girl was in a white wrapper like her own, only without any lace,
and any of The ribbons that adorned Lqdy Dolly at all points, as
tassels a Roman horse at Carnival. Lady Dolly was too lovely
herself, and also far too contented wdth herself to feel any jealousy ;
but she looked at her daughter critically, as she would have looked
at a young untried actress on the boards of the Odeon. “ Quito
another style to me, that is fortunate,” she thought as she looked.
“Like Vere— very— quite extraordinarily like Vere— only hand-
somer still.”

Then she kissed her daughter very prettily on both cheeks, and
with effusion embraced her, much as she embraced Princess Helene
or anybody else that she hated.

“ You took mo by surprise to-day, love,” she said with a little
accent of apology, “ and you know I do so detest scenes. Pray try
and remember that.”

“ Scenes ? ” said Vere. “ Please what are they ? ”

** Scenes ? ” said Lady Dolly, kissing her once more, and a little
puzzled as everybody is, who is suddenly asked to define a familiar
word. “ Scenes ? Well, dear me, scenes are— scenes. Anything,
you know, that makes a fuss, that looks silly, that sets people
laughing ; donT you understand ? Anything done before people, '
you know : it is vulgar.”

“ I think I untllerstand,” said Vere Herbert. She was a very
lovely girl, and despite her height still looked a child. Her small
head was perfectly poised on a slender neck, and her fiice, quite
colourless, with a complexion like the leaf of a white rose, had perfect

14

MOTHS.

c

features, straight, delicate, and nolfte ; her fair hair was cut square
^)ver her brows, and loosely knotted behind ; she had a l&eautiful
serious mouth, not so small as her mother’s, and serene eyes, grey>
as night, contemplative, yet wistful. «

She was calm and still. She had cried as if her heart would
break, but she would have died rather than let her mother guess it.
She had been what the French call refoidcc siir tlle-mmne; and the
process is chilling, s

“Have you all you want?” said Lndy Dolly, casting a hasty
glance round the room. You know i didn't expect you, dear ;
not in the least.”

“ Surely my grandmother wrote V ”

“ Your grandmother telegraphed that you had started ; just like
her I Of course I wished to have you liero,’ and meant to do so,
but not all m a moment.”

“ The horrid old woman will be howling for the child hack
again in three weeks’ time,” thought Lady Dolly once more. “ But
she has done it to sj)ite me : the old cat ! ”

“ Arc you sorry to come to me, love?” she said sweetly mean-
while, drawing Vere down beside her on a couch.

I was very glad,” answered Verc.

Lady Dolly discreetly omitted to notice the past tense. “Ah, no
doubt, very dear of you ! It is three years since I saw you ; for
those few days at BLdnicr hardly count. Bulmer is ferribly dull,
isn’t it ? ”

“ I suppose it is dull ; I was not so. If grandmamma had not
been so often ”

“ Cross as two slicks, you mean,” laughed Lady Dolly. “ Oh, I
know her, my dear : the most disagreeable person that ever lived.
The dear old duke was so nice and so handsome ; but you hardly
remember him, of course. Your grandmamma is a cat, dear — a cat,
positively a cat! We will not talk about her. And how she has
ilrcsscd you ! It is quite wicked to dress a girl like that, it docs
her taste so much harm. You arc very handsome, Vere.”

“ Yes ? I am like my hither, they say,”

“ Very.”

Lady Dolly felt the mist over her eyes again, and this time
knew it was not the prawns. She saw the sunny lawn in Devon,
and the roses, and the little large-eyed child at her breast. Heavens !
what a long way away all that time seemed.

She gazed intently at Vere with a musing apathetic tenderness
that moved the girl, and made her drcmble and glow, because at
last this lovely mother of hers seemed to feel. Lady Dolly’s gaze
grew graver and graver, more and more introspective.

“ She is thinking of the past and of my iJther,” thought the
girl tenderly, and her young heart swelled with reverent sympathy.
She did not dare to break her mother’s silence.

« Vere I ” said Lady Dolly dreamily, at length, I am trying to

MOTHS.

15

think what one can do to get decent clothes. My maid must
run up 1fc)mething for you to wear by to-morrow. It is a pity to
J:eep you shut up all this beautiful weather, and a little life will chf
you good a%r that prison at Bulmer. I am sure those three days
i was last there I thought I should have yawned till I broke my
neck, I did indeed, dear. She would hardly lot me have brcaldast
in my own room, and she would dine at six ! — six ! But she was
ncver^like anybody else ; when <?vcn the duke was alive she was
the most obstinate, humdrum, nasty old scratch-cat in the county.
Such ideas, too ! She was a sort of Wesley in petticoats, and, by
the way, her gowns were never long enough for her. But I was
saying, dear, I will have Adrienne run up something for you
directly. She is clever. I never let a maid mahe a dress. It is
absurd. You might i?s well want llubinstcin to make the violin ho
plays on. If she is inferior, she will make you look a ■‘dowdy. If
she is a really good maid she will not make, she will arrange, what
your tailor has made, and perfect it — nothing more. But still, for
you, Adrienne will go out of her way for once. She shall combine
a few little things, and she can get a girl to sew them for her.
Something to go out in they really must manage for to-morrow.
You shall have brown holland if yon are so fond of it, dear, but you
shall see what brown holland can look like with Adrienne.’'

Vere sat silent.

“ By-thc^ly," said her mother vivaciousl}^ " didn't you bring a
maid? Positively, not a maid?"

“Grandmama sent Keziah: she has always done very well
for me.”

" Keziah ! ” echoed Lady Dolly with a shudder. ‘‘ How exactly
it is like your grandmother to give you a woman called Keziah !
That horrible Friiulcin one might dismiss too, don’t you think ?
You are old enough to do without her, and you shall have a nice
French maid ; Adrienne will soon find one,”

The girl’s eyes dilated with fear.

** Oh ! pray do not send away thcr Fraulcin ! Wo are now in
the conic sections.”

“ The what ? " said Lady Dolly.

'' I mean I could not go on in science or mathematics without
her, and besides, she is so good.”

‘‘Mathematics! science! why, what can you want to make
yourself hateful for, like a Girton College guy ? ”

“ I want to know things ; pray do not send away the Fraulcin.”

Lady Dolly, who was at l\eart very good-natured when her own
comfort was not too much interfered with, patted her check and
laughed.

“ What should ‘‘you want to know? — know how to dress, Iiow
to curtsey, how to look your best ; that is all you want to know.
Believe me, men will ask nothing more of you. As for your
hideous Schroder, I think her the most odious person inexistence,

16 MOTHS.

except your grandmother. But !f ier blue spectacles comfort you,
keep her at present. Of course you will want somebody t%be with
you a good deal : I can’t be ; and I suppose you’ll have to stay^
with me now. You may be seen here a little, and wherever I go'
in autumn ; then you can come out in Paris in the wmter, and b(^
presented next spring. I shall do it to spite your grandmother,
who has behaved disgracefully to me — disgracefully! I believe
she’d be capable of coming iij) t« London to present you herself,
though she’s never set foot there for fifteen years ! ”

Verc was silent.

“ What do you like best ? ” kaid her mother suddenly. Some-
thing in the girl worried her : she could not have said what it was.

Vere lifted her great eyes dreamily,

Greek,” she answered.

‘‘ Greek a horse ? a pony ? a dog ? "

** A language,” said Vere.

“ Of course Greek is a language ; I know that,” said her mother
irritably. “ But of course 1 thojight you meant something natural,
sensible ; some pet of some kind. And what do you like best after
that, pray ? ”

“ Music — Greek is like music.”

Oh dear me ! ” sighed Lady Dolly,

“ I can ride ; I am fond of riding,” added Vere ; " and I can
shoot, and row, and sail, and steer a boat. The keepers taught me.”

Well, that sort of thing goes down rather, now that they walk
with the guns, though Tm quite sure men wish them anywhere all
the while,” said Lady Dolly, somewhat vaguely. Only you must
bo masculine with it, and slangy, and you don’t seem to me to bo
that in the least. Do you know, Vere — it is a horrible thing to
say — but I am dreadfully afraid you will be just the old-fashioned,
prudish, open-air, touch-me-not Englishwoman I I am indeed.
Now you know that won’t answer anywhere, nowadays.”

“ Answer — what?”

“ Don’t take my words up like that, it is rude. I mean, you
know, that kind of style is gone out altogether, pleases nobody ;
men hate it. The only women that please nowadays are Russians
and Americans. Why? Because in their totally different ways
they neither of them care one fig what they do if only it please
them to do it. They are all cMc, you know. Now you haven’t a
bit of chic; you look like a creature out of Burne Jones’s things,
don’t you know, only more — more — religious-looking. You really
look as if you were studying your Bible every minute ; it is most
extraordinary ! ” *

” Her father wuld read mo Keble and Kempis before she waa
born,” thought Lady Dolly angrily, her wrath rising against the
dead man for the psychological inconsistencies in her daughter;
a daughter she would have been a million times better without at
any time.

M0TS8.

“Well, then, my love,” 8h% said suddenly; “you shall ride
and youdiall swim ; that will certwnly help you better than your
Greek and your conic sessions, whatever they may be ; they sound
J!ko something about magistrates, perhaps they have taught you
law as well ?**

“ May I swim here ? ” asked Vere.

“ Of course ; it’s the thing to do. Can you dive?*

** Oh yes ! I am used to the %witer,”

“'^ery well, tlien. But wait; you can’t have any hathing-
dress?”

“ Yes. I brought it. Would yofl wish to see it r Keziah ”

Keziah was hidden to seek for and bring out the bathing-dress,
and after a little delay did so.

Lady Dolly looked. Gradually an expression of horror, such as
is depicted on tlie faces of those who are supposed to. «cc ghosts,
s^iread itself over licr countenance and seemed to change it to stone.

“ That thing ! ” she gasped.

What she saw was the long incljgo-coloured linen gown— high
to the throat and down to the feet — of the uneducated British
bather, whoso mind lias not been opened by the sweetness and
light of contincntnl shores.

“ That thing ! ” gasped Lady Dolly.

'‘What is the matter with it?” said Vcrc, timidly and per*
plexed. * •

Matter ? It is indecent I ”

“ Indecent ? ” Verc coloured all over the white rose-leaf beauty
of her face.

“ Indecent,” reiterated Lady Dolly. “ If it isn’t worse I Good
gracious I It must have been worn at the deluge. The very
children would stone you ! Of course I knew you couldn’t have
any decent dress. You shall have one like mine made to-morrow,
and then you can kick about as you like. Blue and white or blue
and pink. You shall see mine.”

She rang, and sent one of her makls for one of her bathing
costumes, which were many and of all hues.

Yerc looked at the brilliant object when it arrived, puzzled and
troubled by it. She could not understand it. It appeared to be
cut off at the shoulders and the knees,

“ It is like what the circus-riders wear,” she said, with a deep
breath.

“Well, it is, now you name it,” said Lady Dolly amused.

“ You shall have one to-morrow.”

Yere’s face crimsoned.

“But what covers one’s legs and arms?”

“ Nothing ! what* a little silly you are I I suppose you have-
nothing the matter with them, have you? no mark, or twist, or
anything? I don’t remember any when you were little. You
were thought an extraordinarily well-made baby.”

0

18 Moms,

Might one tlicn go naked pAvided only one had no mark or
twist? Vere wondered, and wondered at the world into^hicli she
had strayed, , #

would never wear a costume like that,” sh® said quietiv
after a little pause.

** You will wear what I tell you,” said her sweet little mother
sharply; “and for goodness’ sake, child, don’t be a prude whatever
you are. Prudes belong to NosSi’s Ark, like your bathing-gown.”

Vere was silent.

“Is Mr. Vanderdecken hc^e?” she asked at length, to change
the theme, and, finding her mother did not speak again, who, in-
deed, was busy, thinking what her clothes were likely to cost, and
also whether she would arrange a marriage for her with the young
Due de Tambour, son of the Prince do*Chambr(^e. The best
alliance slie could think of at the minute — but then the i)Oor child
had no dot

“ Mr. Vanderdecken ? ” said Lady Dolly waking to fact. “ Oh,
he is on the sea going somewto-e. lie is always going somewhere ;
it is Java or Japan, or Juj)iter; something with a J. Ho makes
his money in that sort of w^ay, you know. I never understand it
myself. Whenever people want money he goes, and he makes it
because the people he goes to haven’t got any; isn’t it (lucer?
Come here. Do you know, Vere, you are very pretty? You will
bo very handsome. Ki^s me again, dear,” *

Vere did so, learning, by a kind of intuition, that she must
touch her mother without injuring the artistic work of the maids
and the “ little secrets.” Then she stood silent and passive.

“ She is an uncomfortable girl,” thought Lady Dolly once more.
“ And, dear me, so like poor Vere ! What a tall creature you are
getting ! ” she said aloud. “ You will be married in another year.”

“ Oh no ! ” said Vere with a glance of alarm.

“ You unnatural child ! How on earth would you like to live
if you don’t want to be married ? ”

“ With the Fniulein iii the country.”

“ All your life ! And die an old maid ? ”

“ I should not mind.”

Lady Dolly laughed, but it was with a sort of shock and
shudder, as an orthodox j)crson laughs when they hear what is
amusing but irreverent.

“ Why do you say such things ? ” she said impatiently. “ They
are nonsense, and you don’t mean them.”

“ I mean them-^quite.” »

“ NonsenseJ ’’ said Lady Dolly, who never discussed with any-
body, finding asseveration answer all purposes very much better;
as, indeed, it does in most cases. “ Well, gobd-bye, my love ; you
want to rest, and you can’t go out till you have something to wear,
and I have an immense deal to do. Good-bye; you are very
pretty 1”

MOTHS.

19

“ Who was that gentleman Bsaw ? ” asked Vere, as her mother
•ose andiissed her once more on her silky fair hair. “Is he any
relation of papa’s ? He was very kind.”

Lady Dolly coloured ever so little.

“Oh! thSt’s Jack. Surely you remember seeing Jack three
years ago at Homburg, when you came out to meet me there ? ”

“ Is he a relation of ours ? ”

“ No ; not a relation exactly ; 8n1y a friend.”

** And has he no name but Jack ? ”

“Of course. Don’t say silly things. He is Lord Jura, Lord
Shetland’s son. He is in the Guards. A very old acquaintance,
dear — recollects you as a baby.”

“ A friend of my father’s, then ? ”

“Well, no, dear, not quite. Not quite so far back as that.
Ocrtainly he may have fagged for poor Vere at Eton peiTiaps, but I
doubt it. Good-bye, darling. I will send you Adrienne. You
may put yourself in her hands hlmdly. She has perfect taste.”

Then Lady Dolly opened the do»r, and escaped.

Vere Herbert was left to herself. She was not tired ; she was
strong and healthful, for all the white rose paleness of her fair
skin ; and a twelve hours’ tossing on the sea, and a day or two’s
rumbling on the rail, had no power to fatigue her. Her grand-
mother, though a humdrum and a cat, according to Lady Dolly,
had sundry okl-fashioncd notions from whipli the girl had benefited
both in body and mind, and the fresh strong air of Buhner Chase —
a breezy old forest place on the NorthumWland seashore, where
the morose old duchess found a dower house to her taste — had
braced her physically, as study and the absence of any sort of
excitement had done mentally, and made her as unlike her mother
as anything female could have been. The Duchess of Mull was
miserly, cross-tempered, and old-fashioned in her ways and in her
prejudices, hut she was an upright woman, a gentlewoman, and no
fool, as she would say herself. She had been harsh with the girl,
but she had loved her and been just to her, and Vere had spent her
life at Bulmer Chase not unhappily, varied only by an occasional
visit to Lady Dolly, who had always seemed to the child something
too bright and fair to he mortal, and to have an enchanted exist-
ence, where caramels and cosaques rained^ and music was always
heard, and the sun shone all day long.

She was all alone. The Fraulein was asleep in the next room.
The maid did not come. The girl kneeled down by the window-
seat and looked out through ojac of the chinks of the blinds. It
was late afternoon by the sun ; the human butterflies were be-
ginning to come out again. Looking up and down she saw the
whole sunshiny coas4, and the dancing water that was boisterous
enough to be pretty and to swell the canvas of the yachts standing
off the shore.

“How bright it all looks!” she thought, with a little sigh;

20 MOTHS.

the salt fresh smell did her good, and Bulmer, amidst its slowly
budding Avoods and dreary moors, and long dark winter^ had been
anything but bright. Yet she felt very unhappy and lonely. Her
mother seemed a great deal farther away than she had done wh^-.i-
Verc had sat dreaming alx)ut her on the side of the rohgh heathoreci^
hills, with the herons calling across from one marshy pool to another.

She leaned against the green blind and ceased to see the sea and
tho sky, the beach and the buitcrflics, for a little while, her tears
were so full under her lashes, and she did her best to keep them
back. She was full of pain because her mother did not care for
her; but, indeed, why should she care? said Verc to herself; they
had been so little together.

She looked, almost without seeing it at first, at the picture
underneath her; tho stream, which gradually swelled and grew
larger, of ’ beautifully dressed fairy-like women, whose laughter
every now and then echoed up to her. It was one unbroken
current of harmonious colour, rolled out like a brilliant riband on
the fawn-coloured sand against the azure sea.

“ And have they all nothing to do but to enjoy themselves ? ”
thought Vero. It seemed so. If Black Caro were anywhere at
Trouville, as it Avas everywhere else in tho world, it took pains to
Avear a face like the rest and read its “ Figaro.”

She heard the door underneath unclose, and from underneath
the green verandah she^saAv her mother saunter out# Three otlier
ladies were with her and half a dozen men. They Avere talking
and laughing all at once, no one waiting to be listened to or seem-
ing to expect it; they walked across the beach and sat doAvn.
They put up gorgeous simsliades and outs^^read huge fans ; they
were all twitter, laughter, colour, mirth.

All this going to and fro of gay people, the patter of feet and
flutter of petticoats, amused the girl to watch almost as much as
if she had been amidst it. There were such a sparkle of sea, such
a radiance of sunshine, such a rainbow of colour, that though it Avould
have composed ill for a landscape, it made a pretty panorama.

Vere Avatched it, conjecturing in a youthful fanciful ignorant
Avay all kinds of things about the persons Avho seemed so happy
there. When she had gazed for about twenty minutes, making
her eyes ache and getting tired, one of them especially attracted
her attention hy the way in which people all turned after him as
he passed, and the delight that his greeting appeared to cause those
with whom he lingered. He Avas a man of such remarkable
personal beauty that this alone njight have been reason enough
ior the eager welcome of the listless ladies ; but there was even a
greater charm in his perfect grace of movement and vivacity and
airy ease : he stayed little time with any ocie ; but wherever he
loitered a moment appeared to be the centre of all smiles. She
did not know that he was her admirer of the noonday, Avho had
looked at her as he had sauntered along in his bathing shroud and

MOTHS.

21

h\s wliitc slices; but slie watched the easy graceful attitudes of
him with’^ntcrest as he cast himself down on the sand, leaning on
elbow, by a group of fair women.

“ Can yoif tell me who that gentleman is ? ** she asked of her
Aether’s head-maid, the iniinituble Adrienne*

Adrienne looked and smiled.

“ Oh ! that is M. dc Correze.” ^

Correze ! ” Vere’s eyes opened in a blaze of eager wonder,
and the colour rose in her pale cheeks. “ Correze ! Are you sure? ”

“ But yes : 1 am quite sure,” laughed Adrienne. “ Does made-
moiselle feel emotion at the sight of him? She is only like all
others of her sex. Ah ! le he in Correze 1 ”

“ I have never heard him sing,” said Vcrc, very low, as if she
•siioke of some religious thing; “but I would givo^ anything,
aii3'^thing, to do so. And the music he comixiacs himself is

beautiful, 'i'licro is one ‘ Messe de Miuuit * "

“Mademoiselle will bear him often enough wdien she is once
in the world,” said Adricimc, good-naturedly. “ Ali ! when she
shall see him in ‘ Faust * that will be an era in her life. But it
is not bis singing that makes the great ladies rave of him ; it is
his charm. Oh, qnel pli Hire d'amour ! ”

And Adrienne quite sighed with despair, and thou laughed.
Vero colo^urcd a little; KeziaU did not discourse about men
being love-ph litres. •

“Measure me for my clothes; I am tired,” she said with a
cliildish coldness and dignity, turning away from the window.

“ I am entirely at mademoiselle’s service,” said Adrienne with
answering dignity. “ Whoever has had the honour to clothe made-
moiselle has been strangely neglectful of her highest interests.”
“My clothes my highest interest ! I never think about them ! ”
“ That is very sad. They are really barbaric. If mademoiselle
eould behold herself ”

“ They are useful,” said Vere coldly ; “ that is all that is
necessary.”

Adrienne 'was respectfully silent, but she shuddered as if she
had heard a blasphemy. She could not comprehend how the young
barbarian could have been brought up by a duchess. Adrienne
bad never been to Bulmer, and had never seen Her Grace of Mull,
with her silver sjxjctacles, her leather boots, her tweed clothes, her
larm-ledgers, her studbooks, and her ever-open Bible.

“ Measure mo quickly,’’ said Vere. She had lowered the green
jalousies, and would not look eut any more. Yet she felt happier.
She missed dark, old, misty Buhner with its oajsi-wooda by the
ocean ; yet this little gay room, with its pretty cretonne, cream-
coloured, with palo*piuk roses, its gilded mirrors, its rose china,
its white muslin, was cCTtainly blighter and sunnier, and who
could tell but what her mother would grow to love her some day ?
At nino o’clock Lady Dolly, considering herself a martyr to

22

MOTES.

maternity, ran into the little rooni* where Vere was at tea with heir
governess ; Lady Dolly was arrayed for the evening saut^ie at the
Oasino, and was in great haste to be gone. . ^

“Have you everything you like, darling?" she a^^ked, pullin'^
on her pcarl-hued Crispins, “ Did you have a nice little dinner ? '
Yes? Quito sure? Has Adrienne been to you? An exeellent
creature ; perfect taste. Dear me, what a pity ! — you might have
come and jumped about to-uight*‘if you had had only something to
wear. Of course you like dancing?"

“ I dislike it very much."

“ Dear me ! Ah well 1 you won't say so after a cotillon or two.
You shall have a cotillon that Zouroff leads : there is nobody better.
Good night, my sweet Vera. Mind, I shall always call you Vera.
It sounds so Russian and nice, and is much prettier than Vere.”

“ I do not think so, mother, and I am not Russian.”

“ You are very contradictory and opinionated ; much too opin-
ionated for a girl. It is horrid in a girl to have opinions. Friiulein,
how could you let her have opinions ? Good night, dear. I shall
hardly see you to-morrow, if at all. \Vc shall be cruising about
in Jack’s yacht, and we shall start very early. The Grand Duchess
will go out with us. She is great fun, only she docs got in such a
rage when she loses at play, that it is horrible to see. So sorry
you must be shut up, my poor Vera ! ”

“ May I not go out just for a walk ? ”

“ Well, I don’t know — yes, really, I think you might ; if it's
very early, mind and you keep out of everybody’s sight. Pray
take care not a soul sees you.”

“Is not this better, then?” murmured the offender, glancing
down on a white serge frock, which she had put on in the hope
that it might please. It was a simple braided dress with a plain
sil ver belt, and was really unobjectionable.

Lady Dully scanned the garment with a critical air and a parti
pris. Certainly it might have done for the morrow’s yachting, but
then she did not want the wearer of it on the yacht. The girl
would have to be everywhere very soon, of course, but Lady Dolly
put off the evil day as long as she could.

“ It is the cw^,” she said, dropping her glass with a sigh. “ It
can’t be Morgan’s ? ”

“ Who is Morgan ? ” asked the child, so benighted that she had
not even heard of the great Worth of nautical costume.

“ Morgan is the only creature possible for serge,” sighed Lady
Dolly, ^ “ You don’t seem to understand, darling. Material is nothing.
Make is everything. Look at our camelot and percale gowns that
Worth sends us; and look at the satins and velvets of a hourgeoist
from A^ieres or a wine-merchant’s wife from*Clapham ! Oh, my
dear child I cut your gown out of your dog’s towel or your horses^
cloths if you like, but mind Who cuts it : that is the one golden
rule! * But good-night, my sweetest. Sleep well.”

MOTES.

23

Lady Dolly brushed her da^fghter’s cheek with the diamond
end of hei^earring, and took herself off in a maze of pale yellow and
de(^3 scarlet as mysteriously and perfectly blended as the sunset*
c<3k)urs of an Italian night.

‘ She is really very pretty,” she said to her counsellor as he put
her cloak round her and pocketed her fan. “ Really, very hand-
some, like Burne Jones’s things and all that, don’t you know.”

“ A long sight prettier and hcatthier than any of ’em,” said the
counsellor, lighting his cigar ; for he had small respect for the High
Art of his period.

They went forth into the moonlight night to the Casino, and
left Vere to the sleep into which she sobbed herself like a child as
she still was, soothed at last by the sound of the incoming tide and
the muttering of the good Fraulein’s prayers.

CHAPTER IIL

Yere was awoke at five o’clock by tumultuous laughter, gay shrill
outcries, and a sudden smell of cigar smoke. It was her mother
returning home. Doors banged; then all grew still. Vere got up,
looked at the sea and remembered that permission to go out had
been given hef. .

In another hour she was abroad in tlio soft cool sunshine of
early morning, the channel before her, and behind her the stout
form of Northumbrian Keziah.

Tnjuvilain, ac somebody has wittily called it, is not lovel3%
Were it not so celebrated, undoubtedly it would be called common-
place ; but, in the very first light of morning, every spot on earth,
exc(^])t a manufacturing city, has some loveliness, and Trouvilain at
daybreak had some for Vere. There were yachts with slender trim
lines beautiful against the clear sky. There were here and there
])rovision boats pulling out with sailorS in dark blue jerseys, and
red capped. There were fleecy white clouds, and there were cool
sands ; cool now, if soon they would be no better than powder and
dust. Along the poor planks that are the treadmill of fashion,
Vere’s buoyant young feet bore her with swiftness and pleasure till
she reached the Corniche des Roches Noires and got out into the
charming green country.

She glanced at the water and longed to run into the shallows
and wade and spread her limbs out, and float and swim, beating
the sea with her slender arms and rosy toes as she had done most
mornings in the cold, wind-swept, steel-grey northern tides of her
old homo.

But her bathing-costume had been forbidden, had even been
carried away in bitter contempt by one of the French maids, and
never would she go into the sea in this public place in one of those

24 MOTES.

t

sleeveless, legless, circus-rider’s tuhics : no, never, slio said to her-
,self ; and her resolves were apt to be very resolute oncs^ Her old
guardian at Bulmer Chase had ahva 3 ’'s said to her; '‘Never
‘no’ rashly, nor ‘yes’ cither; but when you have said thein,
stand to them as a soldier toliis guns.” ^ •

She did not at all know" her way, but she had thought if she
kept along by the water she would some time or other surely get
out of the sight of all those gay houses, which, shut as all their per-
siennes were, and invisible as were all their occupants, yet had fashion
and frivolity so plainly written on their coquettish awnings, their
balconies, their doorways, their red geraniums and golden calceo-
larias blazing hefure their blinds. At five o’clock there was nobody
tQ trouble her certainly ; yet within sight of all those windows she
had felt as if she w’crc still before the staring eyes and eyeglasses of
the cruel crowd of that terrible ycsterda 3 ^

She went on quickly with the elastic step which had been used
to cover so easily mile after mile of the heatlicred moors of Bulmer,
and the firm yellow sands by the northern ocean. Before the cloud-
less sun of the August daybreak was much above tlie waters of the
east with the smoke of the first steamer from Havre towering grey
and dark against the radiant., rose of the sky, Vere had left
Trouville, and its sleeping beauties and yawning dandies in their
beds, far behind her, and was nearly a third of the way to Villervillc.
She did not know anytlimg at all about Lecamus /ils, Jules David,
Challamol, and Figaro with his cabin, who had made Villerville
famous, but she went onward because the sea was blue, the sand
was yellow, the air was sweet and wholesome, and the solitude was
complete.

Her spirits rose ; light, and air, and liberty of movement were
necessary to her, for, in the old woods and on the rough moors of
Bulmer, her grandmother had let her roam as slie chose, on foot or
on her pony. It had been a stem rule in other things, but as re-
garded air and exercise she had (?njo}’cd the most perfect freedom.

“ Arc you tired, Keziah ? ” she cried at last, noticing that the
patient waiting- woman lagged behind. The stout Northumbrian
admitted that she was. Slie had never been so in her life hcfoi^ ;
but that frightful sea journey from Southampton had left her
stomach ‘orkard.*

Vcrc was touched to compunction.

“You poor creature! and I brought you out without your
breakfast, and we have Wfilked — oh! ever so many miles,” she
s^d in poignant self-reproach. “Keziah, look here, tjiere is a
nice smooth stone. Sit aown on it and rest, and I will run about.
Yes ; do not make any Objection ; sit down.”

Keziah, who adored her very shadow as it ^ell on sward or sand,
demurred faintly, but the flesh was weak, and the good woman
dropped down on the stone with a heavy thud, as cf a sack falling
to earth, and sat there in plaid -.shawl and homespun gown, with

MOTHS.

25

lier Lands on her knees, the hoiftely sober figure that had seemed
to Lady iJftlly to have come out of the ark like the indigo bathing-

^Voro left •her on that niadreporic throne, and strayed onward
“llerself along by the edge of the sea.

On one side of her was a dark bastion of rock, above that, out
of sight, wore green pastures and jjolden corn fields ; on the other
was the Channel, placid, sunny, very unlike the surging turbulent
gigantic waves of her old home.

“ Can you ever be rough ? Can you ever look like salt water ?
she said with a little contempt to it, not knowing anything about
the appalling chopping seas and formidable swell of the Channel
which the boldest mariners detest more than all the grand furies
of Baltic or Atlantic. But it wms bright blue water f^-etted with
little curls of foam, and the low waves rolled up lazily, and lapped
the sand at her feet; and she felt happy and playful, as was
natural to her age ; and that she was quite alone mattered nothing
to her, for she had never had any “young companions, and never
played except with the dogs.

She wandered about, and ran here and there, and found some
sandpipers' empty nests, and gathered some gorse and stuck it in
the riband of her old sailor's hat, and was gay and careless, and
sang little soft low songs to herself, as the swallows sing when
they sit on tlic roof in midsummer. She had taken off her hat,
the wind lifted the weighty gold of her straight cut hair, and blew
the old brown holland skirt away from her slender ankles. She
began to look longingly at the water, spreading away from her so
far and so far, and lying in delicious little cool shallows amongst
the Kstoiies. She could not bathe, but she thought she might wade
and paddle. She took off her shoes and stockings, and waded in.
The rock pools were rather deep, and the water rose above her
«anklcs; those pretty roses, and lilacs, and feathery hyacinths of
the sea that science calls actinim, uncurled their tufts of feathers,
and spread out their starry crowns, and ftfted their tiny bells around
Ikt; broad riband weeds floated, crabs waddled, little live shells
sailed here and there, and all manner of aJgx^ brown and red, were
curling about the big stones. She was in paradise.

She had been reared on the edge of the sea — the cold dark
stern sea of the north, indeed, but still the sea. This was only a
quiet sunny nook of the French coast of the Channel, but it was
charming from the silence, the sunshine, and the sweet liberty of
the waters. She thought she was miles away from every one, and
therefore was duly obeying her mother's sole cummand. There
was not even a sail in sight; quite far off was a cloud of d^yk
boats, which were tlic fishing cobles of Honfleur ; there was nothing
^se near, nothing but a score of gulls, spreading their white wings,
and diving to catch the fish as they rose.

She waded on and on ; filling an old creel with seaweeds and

26 MOTHS.

seashells, for she was no more thaft a child in a great many things.
The anemones she would not take, because she had n^pmeans of
'keejping them in comfort. Sho contented herself with standmg
nearly knee deep, and gazing down on all their glories seen throiff^
the glass of the still, sparkling water. She sj^rang from stone
stone, from pool to pool, forgetting Keziah seated on her rock.
Neither did she see a pretty little dingey that was fastened to a
stake amongst the boulders. ^

The air was perfectly still; there “was only one sound, that
of the incoming tide running up and rippling over the pebbles.

Suddenly a voice from the waves, as it seemed, began to chauut
paits of the Iloquicm of Mozart. It was a voice pure as a lark’s,
rich as an organ’s swell, tender as love’s first embrace, marvellously
melodious, in a word, that rarity which the earth is seldom blessed
enough to hear from more than one mortal throat in any century :
it was a perfectly beautiful tenor voice.

Vere ^vas standing in the water, struck dumb and motionless ;
her eyes dilated, she scarcely Jbreathed, every fibre of her being,
everything in her, body and soul, seemed to listen. She did not
once wonder whence it came ; the surpassing beauty and melody of
it held her too entranced.

Whether it were in the air, in the w\atcr, in the sky, she never
asked — one would have seemed as natural to her as the otlicr.

From the Itcquiem jt passed with scarce a paii^c to the im-
passioned songs of Gounod’s Romeo. Whatever the future may
say of Gounod, this it will never be able to deny, that ho is the
supreme master of the utterances of Love. The passionate music
rose into the air, bursting upon the silence and into the sunlight,
and seeming to pierce the very heavens, then sinking low and
sweet and soft as any lover’s sigh of joy ; breaking off at last
nbruplly and leaving nothiiig but the murmur of the sea.

The girl drew a great breathless cry, as if something beautiful
were dead, and stood quite still, her figure mirrored in the shallows.

The singer came round from the projecting ledge of the hro\vn
cliffs, uncovered his head and bowed low, with apology for un-
witting intrusion on her solitude.

It was he whom Adrienne had called le philtre iT amour.

Then the girl, who had been in heaven, dropped to earth ; and
roniembered her wet and naked feet, and glanced down on them
with shame, and coloured as rosy-red as the sea-flowers in the
pool.

She throw an eager glance over the sands. Alas ! she had
forgotten her sl^cs and stockings, and the place where they had
been knew theifi no mdre — the waves had rippled over them and
were tossing them, heaven could tell how near^or far away.

The “sad leaden humanity,” which drags us all to earth,
brought her from the trance of ecstasy to the very humblest prose?
of slame and need.

MOTHS.

2 ?

“ I have lost them/* she murmured ; and then felt herself grow
from rose scarlet, as the singer stood on the other side of the
pool gazing at her and seeing her dilemma with amusement.

Your shoes and stockings, mademoiselle ?

^ lie was so* used to seeing pretty nude feet at Trouvillo that it
was impossible for him to measure the awful character of the
calamity in the eyes of Vero.

“ Yes, I took them off ; and I ^lever dreamt that any one was.
here.”

“ Perhaps you have only forgotten where you put them. Let
me have the honour to look for your lost treasures.”

Vere stood in her shallow, amongst the riband weed, with her
head hung down, and the colour burning in her face. All her
pride, of which slie had much, could not avail her here. She was
nervously ashamed and unhappy. *

The new-comer searched ardently and indcfatigahly, leaving no
nook of rock or little deposit of sea- water unexaniined. He wadud
in many places, and turned over the iveed in all, but it Avas in vain.
Tlic sea ^vas many an inch deeper over the shore than when she
had first come, and her shoes and hose were doubtless drifting
loose upon the waves : there was no trace of them.

Unconscious of this tragedy enacting, Keziah sat in the calm
distance, a grey and brown figure, facing the horizon.

Verc stood«all the while motionless ; tliQ sweet singing seeming
•still to throb and thrill through the air around, and the sunny
daylight seeming to go round her in an amber mist, through which
she only saw her own two naked feet, still covered in some sort
with the water and the weeds.

** They are gone, raademoiselle ! ” said the singer, coming to
her with eyes that ho made most tender and persuasive. They
were beautiful eyes, that lent themselves with willingness to this
familiar office.

U’liey must have been w'ashed away by the tide ; it is coming
higher each moment. Indeed, you musfnot remain where you arc
or you will be surrounded very soon, and carried off yourself.
These channel tides arc treacherous and uncertain.”

“I will go to my maid,” murniured Vere, with a fawn-like
spring from her stones to others, forgetting in her shame to even
thank him for his services.

“ To that admirable person enthroned yonder ? ” said the singer
of the songs. “ But, mademoiselle, there is the deep sea between
you and her already. Look ! ”

Indeed, so rapidly ha-d the tide run in, and the waters swelled
up, that she was divided from her attendant by a* broad sheet of
blue shadows. Keziah, tired and sleepy from her journeyings, wa&
nodding unconsciously on her throne of rooks.

“And she will ho drowned!” said Vero with a piercing cry,,
and she began wadirg knee-deep into tha aca before her companion

23

MOTES.

knew what she was about. In a*moment he had caught her and
lilted her back on to the firm sand.

“ Your good woman is in no danger, but j^'ou cannot reach licr
60 , and you will only risk your own life, mademoijiplle,” Iig.iJ^kI
gently. “ There is nothing to be alarmed about. Shout to yoiM'
attendant to take the path up the cliffs — perhaps she would not
understand me — and we will take this road ; so we shall meet on
the top of this table-land tliaf is now above our heads. That
is all. Shout loudly to her.”

Vere was trembling, but she obeyed — slic had learned the too
oft- forgotten art of obedience at Buhner Chaise, and she sbouted
loudly till she aroused Keziah, who awoke, rubbing her eyes, and
dreaming, no doubt, that she was in the servants* hall at Buhner.

AVhen she understood what had Jiappened and wliat she was
Iklden to tlo, the stout north countrywoman tucked up her petti-
coats, and began to climb up the steep path with a will, onee
assured that her young mistress was out of all danger. The fiice of
the cliff soon hid her figure from sight, and Vere felt her heart sink
strangely.

But she had no time to reflect, for the stranger ]>ropelled her
gently towards the worn ridge in the rocks near them, a path
which the fisher-people Jiad made in coming up and down.

“ Let us mount quickly, mademoiselle. I did not notice myself
that the tide was so high. Alas ! I fear the rocks '(Vi 11 hurt your
feet. When wo reach the first ledge you must wind some grass
round them. Come ! "

Vere began to climb. The stones, and the sand, and the rough
di-y weeds cut her feet terribly, but these did not hurt her so much
as the idea that he saw her without shoes and stockings. Beaching
a ledge of stone ho bade her sit down, and tore up some broad
grasses and brought them to her.

“Bind these about your feet,” be said kindly, and turned his
hack to her. Ah ! why 'v\dll you mind so much ? l^Iadauie,
your lovely mother, dances about so for two or three hours in the
water-carnival every noonday !

“Do you know my mother?” said Vere, lifting her face, very
hot and troubled from winding the gi'ass about her soles and
insteps.

“ 1 have had that honour for many years in Paris. You will
have heard of me, perhaps. I am a singer.”

Vere, for the first time,. looked in his face, and saw that it was
the face whose beauty had attracted her in the sunlight on the
shore, and who^ Adrienne had called the philtre <r amour.

“ It was you who 'Were singing, then ? ” she said timidly, and
thinking how beautiful and how wonderful h(?was, this great artist,
who stood before her clothed in white, with the sun shining in his
luminous eyes.

“ Yes. 1 came here to bathe and to swim, and then run over

MOTHS. 29

some of the scores of a new operas tSat wo shall have in Paris this
winter, of^mbroisc Thomas's. One cannot study in peace for ten
minutes in Trouville. You love music, mademoiselle ? Oh 1 you
no# not speak : one always knows.”

never *went to any opera,” said Vere under her breath,
resuming her climb up the rock.

“ Never ! May I sing to you then in the first opera you hear !
Take care ; this patli is steep. Ite not look back ; and catcli at
the piles where the ^uindeaux hang. You need fear nothing. I
am behind yon.”

Vere climbed on in silence : the thick bands of grass protected
ner feet in a measure, j'et it was hard and rough work. Young
and strong though she was, she was glad when they reached tlio
short grass on tlic head of the cliffs and sank down on it, field-fares
and several, birds of all kinds wheeling around her ill the grey
clear air.

“ You are not faint?” he asked anxiously.

‘‘ Oh no 1 Only tired.”

'' Will you rest here ten minutes, and I will come back to you ? ”

** If you wish me.”

lie smiled at the childish docility of the answer and left her,
whilst she leaned down on the turf of the table-land, and gazed at
the sea far down below, and at the horizon where many a white
sail shone, and here and there streamed the„dark trail of a, steamer's
smoke. She had forgotten Keziah for the moment ; she was only
hearing in memory those wonderful tones, clear as a lark's song,
rich as an organ’s swell, ringing over the waters in the silence.

In less than ten minutes he Ava.s back at her side with a pair of
little new wooden shoes in his hand.

*‘I thought these might save you from the stones and dust a
little, Mademoiselle Herbert,” he said, “and it is impossible to
procure any better kind in this village. Will you try them ? ”

She was grateful; the little shoes were a child's size, and fitted
as if they had been the glass slipjier of Cinderella,

“You are very good,” she said timidly. “And how can you
tell what my name is ?”

“I witnessed your arrival yesterday. Besides, who has not
heard of lovely Madame Dolly's daughter? ”

Vere was silent. She vaguely wondered why her mother was
called Dolly by all men whatever.

Suddenly, with a pang of conscience, she remembered Keziah,
and sprang up on her Correze divined her imx^ulse and her

thought. ' . .

“ Your good woman is quite safe,” he said ; “ the peasants have
seen her on the top^-of the rocks, but she seems to have taken a
WTong path, and so it may be half an hour before wo overtake lier.
But do not be afraid or anxious. I will see you safely homeward.”

Vere grew very pale.

30 MOTES.

" But mother made rhe promise to see no one/*

«Why?"

“ Because my dress is all wrong. And poor Keziah ! — oh, ho\i
frightened she will be ! ” . .

“Not very. We shall soon overtake her. Or, better still,
will send a lad after her while we rest a little. Come and see my
village, if you can walk in your sabots. It is a village that I have
discovered, so I have the righdi of Selkirk. Come, if you are not
too tired. Brava ! ”

He cried “ brava ! ” because she walked so well in her woochui
shoes; and ho saw that to ])lease him she was overcoming the
timidity which the solitude of her situation awoke in her.

“How can she be the daughter of tliat little impudent Jim
mouche ? ” he thought.

Vere was shy but brave. Lady Dolly and her sisterhood wero
audacious but cowardly.

He led her across the broad hard head of the cliffs, mottled
black and grey where the rock«broke through the grass, and thence
across a sort of rambling down with low furze-bushes growing on
it, further by a cart-track, where cart-wheels had cut deep into the
toil, to a little cluster of houses, lying sheltered froth the sea winds
by the broad bluff of the cliffs which rose above them, and gathered
under the shelter of apple and cherry trees, with one great walnut
growing in the midst. . *

It was a poor little village enough, "with a smell of tar from the
fishing-nets and sails spread out to dry, and shingle roofs held
down with stones, and little dusky close-shut pigeon-holes for
windows : but, in the memory of Vere for ever afterwards, that
little village seemed even as Arcadia.

He had two wooden chairs brought out, and a wooden table, and
set tliem under the clicny-trccs, all reddened then with fruit. Jle
had a wooden howl of milk, and honey, and brown bread, and
clierries, brought out too. There were lavender and a few homely
stocks and wallflowers growing in the poor soil about the fences of
the houses ; bees hummed and swallows cleft the air.

“ You are thirsty and hungry, 1 am sure,” he said, and Vere,
v.’ho had not learned to be ashamed of such things, said with a
smile, “ I am.”

He had reassured her as to Keziah, after whom he had sent a
fishcr-boy. That the fishcr-b^ would ever find Keziah he did not
in the least see any reason to believe; but he. did not see any
reason cither why ho should toll Vere so, to make her anxious and
\listurbed. The girl had such a lovely face, and her innocence and
seriousness pleased him. ‘

“Are you sure the hoy will soon find my 'woman? ” she asked
him wistfully.

“ Quite sure,” he answered. “ Ho saw her himself a little while
ago on the top of the cliff yonder. Do not bo dismayed about that,

MOTm 81

und find some appetite for this liSmely fare. I have made requisi-
tions like^fcny Prussian, but the result is poorer than I hoped it
mi^t be. Try some cherries.”

te^cherries were ‘fine biggaroons, scarlet and white, and Vere
was still a child. ^ She drank her milk and ate them with keen
relish. The morning was growing warm as the sun clomb higher
in the heavens. She took off her hat, and the wind lifted the thick
hair falling over her forehead ; exertion and excitement had brought
a flush of colour in her cheeks ; the light and shade of the walnut
leaves was above her head ; little curly-headcd children peeped
behind the furze fence and the sweetbriar hedge ; white-capped old
women looked on, nodding and smiling ; the sea was out of sight,
but the sound and the scent of it came there.

It is an idyl,” thought her companion ; idyls were mot in his
life, which was one of unending triumphs, passions, and festivals,
dizzily mingled in a world which adored him. Meanwhile it pleased
him, if only by force of novelty, and no incident on earth could
ever have found him unready. •

”You love music?” ho cried to her. “Ah! now if we were
but in Italy injhat dark little cottage there would be sure to be a
thifem'a^ and I would give you a serenade to your cherries ; perhaps
without one — why not, if you like it ? But first. Mademoiselle
Herbert, I ouglit to tell you who 1 am.”

“ Oh ! I know,” said Vero, and lifted^ hfer soft eyes to him with
a cherry against her lips,

“ Indeed?”

“ Yes, I saw you on the plage yesterday, and Adrienne told me.
You arc Oorreze.”

She said the name tenderly and reverently, for his fame had
reached her in her childhood, and she had often thought to herself,
“ If only I could hear Correze once I ”

He smiled caressingly.

“ I am glad that you cared to ask. .Yes, I am Correze, that is
certain ; and perhaps Correze would be the name of a greater artist
if the world had not spoilt him — your mamma’s world, mademoi-
selle. Well, my life is very hai^py, and very gay and glad, and
after all the fame of the singer can never be but a breath, a sound
through a reed. When our lips are once shut there is on us for
ever eternal silence. Who can remember a summer-breeze when
it has passed by, or tell in any aftertime how a laugh or a sigh
sounded?” o

His face grew for the moment sad and overcast— that beautiful
face which had fascinated the eyes of the girl as it had done the
gaze of multitudes in burning nights of enthusiasm from Neva to
Tagus, from Danube to Seine.

Vere looked at him and did not speak. The gaze of Correze had
a magic for all women, and she vaguely felt that magic as she met
those eyes that were the eyes of Romeo and of Faust.

MOTES.

" What a lovely life it inust> be, your life,” she said timidly.
“ It must be like a perpetual poem, I think.”

Corr5ze smiled.

An artist’s life is far ofi* what you fancy it, I fqir ; but ,y4t at
the least it is full of colour and of change. I am in the 'shows
Kussia one day, in the suns of Madrid another. I know the life of
the palaces, I have known the life of the poor. When I forget tho
latter may heaven forget me ! •Some day when we are older friends,
Mademoiselle Herbert, I will tell you my story,”

** Tell me now,” said Vere softly, with her gazo beginning to
grow intent and eager under the halo of her hair, and letting her
cherries lie unheeded on her lap.

Correze laughed.

Oh, you will be disappointed. I have not much of one, aiul
it is no secret. I am llaphacl de Correze ; I am tho Marquis do
Correze if it were of any use to be so ; but I prefer to be Correze tho
singer. It is much simpler, and yet much more uncommon. Thcro
are so many marquises, so few tenors. My race was great amongst
the old noblesse do Savoie, hut it was beggared in the Terror, and
their lands were confiscated and most of tlioir lives were taken. I
was horn in a cabin ; my grandfather had been born in a castle ; it
did not matter. He was a philosopher and a scholar, and ho had
taken to the mountains and loved them. My father married a
peasant girl, and lived as simply as a shepherd. My mother died
early. I ran about barefoot aud saw to tho goats. We were on
tho Valais side of the Pennine Alps. I used to drive the goats up
higher, higher, higher, as the summer drew on, and the grasKS was
eaten down. In the winter an old priest, who lived with us, and
my father, when he had leisure, taught me. We were very poor
and often hungry, but they were happy times. I think of them
when I go across the Alps wrapped up in iny black sables that tho
Emx)rcss of Pussia has given me. I think I was warmer in the old
days with the snow ten feet deep all around ! Can you understand
that snow may be warmet than sables ? Yes ? AVell, thcro is little
to tell. One day, when it was summer, and travellers were coming
up into the Pennine valleys, some one heard me sing, and said my
voice was a fortune. I was singing to myself and the goats among
the gentian, the beautiful blue gentian — you know it ? Ho, you
do not know it, unless you have roamed the Alps in May. Other
persons came after him and said the same thing, and wanted me to
go with them ; but I would not leave my father. Who could stack
wood for him, and cut paths through the snow, and rake up the
chestnuts and store them ? I did all that. I would not go. AVhen
I was fifteen lie died. ‘ Do not ferget you are the last Marquis de
Correze,’ he said to me with his last breatk. Ho had never for-
gotten it, and ho had lived and died in tho shadow of the Alps an
honest man and a gentleman in his mountain hut. I passed tho
winter in great pain and trouble ; it had been in the autumn that

MOTHS.

33

lie had died. I could not resolve whether it would disjiloa^c him
in his grav^under the snow that a Corrfize should bo a singer ; yet
a singer I longed to be. With the spring I said to myself that after
all IjRj^ould be as loyal a gentleman as a singer as a soldier ; why
]V>t? 1 rose up and walked down to the bottom of our ravine,
where twice a week the diligences for Paris run ; I found one going
on the road ; I went by it, and went on and on until I entered Paris.
Ah ! that entry into Paris of the bojr with an artist's ambition and
a child's faith in destiny ! Why have they never written a poem
on it ? Once in Paris my path was easy ; my voice made me friends.
I went to Italy, I studied, I was heard, I returned to my dear Paris
and triumi)hcd. Well, I have been happy ever since. It is very
much to say and yet sometimes I long for the old winter nights,
roasting the chestnuts, with the wall of snow outside ! " ,

Vera had listened with eloquent dim eyes, and a fast beating
heart ; her cherries lying still uneaten on her lap. She gave a little
quiet sigh as his voice ceased.

You feel so about it because your father is dead," she said
very low, under her breath. “ If he were here to know all your
triumphs ”

. Correze bent down and touched her hand, as it hung forward
over her knee, with his lips. It was a mere habitual action of
graceful courtesy with him, but it gave the child a strange thrill.
tSiio had never ^ecn those tender easy ceremonies of the South. He
saw that he had troubled her, and was sorry.

Eat your cherries. Mademoiselle Herbert, and I will sing you
a song,” ho said gaily, droiqnng a cherry into his own mouth, and
ho began to hum in his perfect melodious notes odds and ends of
some of the greatest music of the world.

Then he sang with a voice only raised to one tenth of its power,
the last song of Eernando, his lips scarcely parting as he sang, and
his eyes looking away to the yellow gorso and the sheep-cropped
grass, and the drifting clouds; giving to, the air and sea what ho
often refused to princes.

For the great tenor Correze was a prince himself in his caprices.

The i)erfcct melody that held multitudes enthralled, and moved
whole pities to ecstasies, that dissolved queens in tears and made
women weep like little children, was heard on the still sunny
Ksilcnce of the cliffs with only a few babies tumbling in the sandy
grass, and an old woman or two sitting spinning at her door. Down
in gay Trouville all his worshiiq^ers could not woo from him a note ;
the entreaties that were commands found him obdurate and left
him indifferent ; and ho saiig here to the lark th^t was singing
over his head, because a girl of sixteen had lost her shoes and
stockings, and he wislfcd to console her.

When once the voice left his lips he sang on, much as the lark
did, softly and almost unconsciously ; the old familiar melodies fol-
lowing one another unhidden, as in his childhood he had used to

D

MOTHS.

H

sing to the goats with the flush of* the Alpine roses about his feet,
and the snow above his head. *

The lark dropped, as though owning itself vanquished, into the
hollow, where its consort’s lowly nest was made. CorrejjgaWased
suddenly to sing, and looked at his companion. Vere was cryin^i

“ All ! my beautiful angel 1 ” said an old peasant woman to
him, standing close against thq furze fence to listen ; do you come
out of paradise to tell us wo arc not quite foi-got there ? ”

Vere said nothing; she only turned on him her great soft eyes
whilst the tears were falling unchecked down her cheeks.

“ Mademoiselle,” said CorrSze, “I have had flattery in my time,
and more than has been good for me ; but who ever gave me such
sweet flattery as yours ? ”

'‘Flattery!” murmured Vere. “I did not mean — oh! how
can you say that ? The woman is right — it is as if it came from
the angels 1 **

“ liy a servant of angels most unworthy, then,” said Correze,
with a Binilc and a sigh. “ As for the woman— good mother, here
is a gold piece that carries Paradise in it ; or, at least men think so.
But I am afraid, myself, that by the time we have found the gold
pieces we have most of us forgotten the way to Paradise.”

Vere was silent. She was still very pale ; the tears stood on
her lashes as the rain stands on the fringes of the dark passion-
flower after a storm. ‘

“ Tell me your name, my angel,” said the old woman, with her
hand on the coin.

** Kaphael.”

1 will pray to St. Kaphael for you ; if indeed you be not he ? ”

" Nay ; lam not he. Pray always, good soul ; it is pleasant
‘ i* think that some one prays for us. Those cries cannot all be

-jBt.”

“ Have you none to love you?” said the old woman. “ That is
odd, for you are beautiful.”

“ I have many to love me — in a way. But none to pray that
I know of — that is another affair. Mother, did you see that lark
that sang on against me, and dropped to its nest at last ? ”

“ I saw it.”

“ Then have a heed that the hoys do not stone, and the trappers
net it.”

“ I will. What is your fancy ? ”

“ It is a little brother.”

The peasant woman did not understand, but she nodded three
inics. ** The lark shall be safe as a king in his court. The plot
.e is in is mine. When you want a thing ^ay to women you wish
it — you do not w’ant to say anything else.”

Correze laughed, and pulled down a rose from behind the sweet-
briar. He held it out to Vere.

‘‘ If there were only a single rose here and there upon earth, men

MOTIIB.

85

and women would pass their years on their knees before its beauty.
I wonder ^^metiines if human ingratitude for beauty ever hurls
God ? One might fancy even Deity wounded by neglected gifts.
Wlmt do you say ? ”

He^'iAucked a little lavender and some sea^ pinks, and wound
them together with the rose.

“ When the fools throw me flowers they hurt me ; it is bar-
barous,” he said. “To throw lauitl has more sense; there is a
bitter smell in it, and it carries a sound allegory ; but flowers ! —
flowers thrown in the dust, and dying in the gas-glare 1 The little
live birds thrown at Carnival are only one shade worse. Ah ! here
is the lad that I sent to find your waiting-woman.”

The rose, the song, the magical charm seemed all dissolved
before Vere as by the speaking of some disenchanter’s spell : the
hardness and fearfulness of prosaic fact faced her.

The fisher-lad explained that he had been miles in search of the
good woman, but ho had not found her. Men ho had lately mot
had told him they had seen such a figure running hard back to the
town.

“ What shall I do ? ” she murmured aloud. “ I have been for-
getting all the trouble that I have been to you. Show mo the way
back — only that— I can find it — can go alone. Indeed I can,
M. do (vorreze,”

“ Indeed, yftii will do nothing of the kind,” said Corr^ze. “ Your
woman is quite safe, you see, so you need fear nothing for her. No
doubt she thinks you have gone that way home. Mademoiselle
Herbert, if you will listen to mo, you will not distress yourself, but
let me take you in my little boat that is down there to Troiiville.
It is impossible that you should walk in those wooden shoes, and
carriage or even cart there is none here. Come, it is half-past nine
only now. The sun is still temperate ; the sea is smooth. Come,
1 will row you home in an hour.”

“ But I have bccu such a trouble to you.”

“ May I never have worse burdens !

“ And my mother will be so angry.”

“Will she? Madamo Dolly, a mother and angry! I cannot
picture it ; and I thought I knew her in every phase. My child
do not bo so troubled about nothing. We will drift back slowly
and pleasantly, and you shall be in your mother’s house before
noon strikes. And every one knows me. That is one of the uses
of notoriety ; it has many drawbacks, so it need have some com-
pensations. Come. I rowed myself out here. I studied music a
year in Venice when I was*a lad, and learned rowirig on the Lido
from the fruit-girls. Come.”

She did not resist fhuch more ; she thought that he must know
best. With the grey lavender and the rose at her throat, she went
away from under the cherry trees ; the old woman in her blue
gown gave them her blessing ; the lark left his nest and began to

36 MOTHB.

i

sing again ; the sunny hour was over, the black siedpjiead of the
t cliffs was soon between them and the little hamlet

They walked down by an easier way to the shore. TJic little
boat was rocking on a high tide.

** Can you steer ? ” said Corrdzo,

“Oh yes,” said Vere, who was learned in all sailing and boat-'
ing, after a childhood passed hy the rough grey waters of an iron
coast.

He took the oars, and she the ropes. The sea was smooth, and
there was no wind, not even a ruffle in the air ; the boat glided
slowly and evenly along.

lie talked and- laughed, he amused and beguiled her ; he told
her stories, now and then he sang low sweet snatches of Venetian
boat-son gS' and rowing chaunts of the Lombard lakes and of the
lUvicra gulfs and bays ; the sun was still cool ; the sea looked blue
to her eyes which had never beheld the Mediterranean. There
were many craft in sight, pleasure and fishing vessels, and farther
away large ships ; but nothing drew near them save one old coble
going in to Etretat from the night’s dredging. It was an enchanted
vo 5 "age to Vere, as the hamlet on the cliffs, and the homely lavender,
and the cabbage rose, had been all enchanted things. She was in
a dream. She wondered if she were really living. As she had
never read but great and noble books, she thought vaguely of the
Faerie Queen and of the' Fata Morgana. And through the sunlight
against the sea, she saw as in a golden halo the beautiful brilliant
dreamy face of Corr^ze.

At last the voyage was done.

The little boat grated against the sands of Trouvillc, and
against the side of a yacht’s gig waiting there with smart sailors
in white jerseys and scarlet caps, with “Ephemeris” in large blue
letters woven on their shirts.

It was still early, earlier than it was usual for the fashionable
idleness of the place to ho upon the shore; and Correze had
liojDcd to run his boat in on land unnoticed. But, as the ciunki-
ness of fate would have it, several people had been wakened before
Iheir usual hour. The yachts of a great channel race, after having
been all night out towards the open ocean, had hove in sight on
their homeward tack, and were objects of interest, as heavy bets
were on them, Corrdze, to his annoyance, saw several skiffs and
canoes already out upon the wkter round him, and several poppy-
coloured and turquoisc-colburod stripes adorning the bodies of
human beings, and moving to and fro, some on the sand, some in
the surf, some in the deeper sea* .

There was no help for it, ho saw, but to run the boat in, and
trust to chance to take his companion unnoticed across the few
hundred yards that separated the shore from the little house of
Lady Dolly.

But chance chose otherwise.

MOTES. 87

As he steered through the still shallow water, and ran the boat
up on tbe^mnd, there were some human figures, like gaily painted
pegtops, immediately swarming down towards him, and amongst*
thejn ^a,dy Dolly herself ; Lady Dolly with a pcnthousc-like erec-
tion ofi^traw above her head to keep the sun off, and her body
tightly encased in black and yellow stripes, till she looked like a
wasp — if a wasp had ever possessed snowy arms quite bare and bare
white legs. *

Correzo gave his hand to Vere to alight, and she set her little
W’oodon shoes nj)on the dusty shore, and did not look uji. Tho
golden clouds seeinrd all about her still, and she was wondering
what she could ever say to him to thank him enough for all his
care.

A peal of shrill laughter pierced her ear and broke h^r musing.

“ Correze, w'hat nymph or naiad have you found ? A mermaid
in fsalots ! Oh ! oh ! oh 1

The laughter pealed and shrieked, as fashionable ladies’ laughter
will, more often than is pretty j and*then, through the laughter sho
heard her mother’s voice. ,

“Ah — ha! Correze! So this is why you steal away from
s\q:)pcr when the daylight Qomes? ”

Corriize, surrounded by the swarming and parti-colourcd pegtops,
lifted his head, comprehended tho situation, and bowed to the ground.

“ I have nad the honour and hap])in(*ss, madame, to bo of a
slight service to Mademoiselle Herbert.”

The group of pegtops was composed of Lady Dolly, tho Prin-
cesso Helene, a Princess Zophine, three other ladies, and several
gentlemen, just come to the edge of the sea to bathe.

Vere gave one amazed glance at her mother and blushed scarlet.
The glance and the blush were not for tho shame of her own
misdoing; they were for tho shame of her mother’s attire. Vere,
who had been overwhelmed with confusion at the loss of her shoes,
was very Air from comprehending the state of feeling which adopts
a fashionable swimming costume as perfect propriety, and skips
about in the surf hand in hand with a male swimmer, the cynosure
of five hundred eyeglasses and lorgnons.

She had seen the bathing-dress indeed, but though she had
perceived that it was legless and armless, sho had imagined that
something must be worn with it to supplement those deficiencies,
and she had not in any way reckoned the full enornjity of it as it
had hung limp over the back of a chair.

But on her mother !

As tho group of living' human '^gtops swarmed* before her on
the edge of the sea, and she realised that it was actually her
mother, actually her Scad father’s wife, who was before her, with
those black and yellow stripes for all her covering, Vere felt her
checks and brow burn all over as with fire. They thought she was
blushing with shame at herself, but she was blushing fur shame for

88 MOTHS.

tliem, and those tight-drawn rainbow-coloured stripes that showed
.every line of the form more than the kilted skirts and sCant ra^s of
the iislier-girls ever showed theirs. If it were right to come clown
to dance about in the water with half a dozen men aroiyaiJUkow
could that which she had done herself be so very wrong ? The s(3.'i
and the sands and the sky seemed to go round with her. She was
only conscious of the anger spa^cling from her mother^s eyes; she
did not heed the tittering and the teasing with which the other
ladies surrounded her companion,

“ Vere ! *’ — Lady Dolly for the moment said nothing more. She
stood blankly staring at her daughter, at the sunburnt hat, the
tumbled hair, the wooden shoes; and at the figure of Correzo
against the sun.

“ You-^-with Correze ! ” she cried at length ; and Correze,
studying her pretty little face, thought how evil pretty women
could sometimes look.

“Mademoiselle Herbert had lost her maid, and her road, and
her shoes,” he hastened to say with his most charming grace ; “ T
have been happy enough to bo of a little — too little — service to her.
The fault was none of hers, but all of the tide ; and, save the loss
of the shoes, there is no mischief done.”

“M. Correze has wasted his morning for me, and has been
so very kind,” said Vere. Her voice was very low, but it was
steady. She did not tliink she had done any wrong, but she felt
bewildered, and was not quite sure.

Her mother laughed very irritably.

“Correze is always too kind, and always a preux chevalier.
What on earth have you been doing, darling ? and where are your
women? and how'ever could you be so quite too dreadfully fi)i.ilish ?

I suppose you think life is like Alice in Wonderland ? Jack, see
her home, will you ? and join us at the yacht and lock her uj) in
her room, and the. German with her. How good of you, dear
Correze, to bore yourself vwth a troublesome child ! If it ^vere any-
body else except you who had come ashore like this with my Vera
I should feel really too anxious and angry. But, with you ”

“ Madame I I am too fortunate I If you deem me to be of any
use, however, let me claim as a guerdon, permission to attend
mademoiselle your daughter to her home.”

“Jack, see her home, pray. Do you hear me?” said Lady
Dolly again, sharply. “No — not you, Correze — you are quite too
charming to be trusted. Jack’s like an old woman.”

The Princessc H41^ne smiled at the Princess Zephine.

If old women are thirty years old, handsome in a fair bold
breezy fashion, and six feet three in heighL then was Lord Jura
like them. He had come ashore from the “ Ephemeris,” and was
the only one of the party decently clad.

“Why should she go home?'* muttered Jura, “why may she
not come with us—eh V ”

MOTES.

SO

“ Out of th6 question,” said Lady Dolly, very sharply.

He was^a silent man ; he eaid nothing now ; he strode off
silently to Vere’s side, lifting his straw hat a little, in sign of his
accep^^\nce of his devoir.

• Vere made an inclination to her mother and the other ladies,
with the somewhat stately deference that had been imposed on her
at Bulmer Chase, and began to move toward the Chdlet Ludoif,
whose green blinds and gilded scrdll balconies were visible in the
distance. Corr^ze bowed very low with his own matchless grace
and ease, and began to follow them.

No ; not you, Correze ; I cannot permit it. You are too fasci-
nating — infinitely too fascinating — to play chaperon,” cried Lady
Dolly once more. ** Vera, when you get home go to your room,
and stay there till I come. You have had enough liberty to-day,
and have abused it shamefully,”

Having screamed that admonition on the air, Lady Dolly turned
to her friends the feminine pegtops, and entreated them not to
think too badly of her naughty little puss — she was so young !

In a few moments all the pegtops had jumped into the water,
and the young Due de Dinant was teaching Lady Dolly to execute
in the waves a. new dance just introduced in an operetta of
Messieurs Meilhac and Herv6; a dance that required prodigious
leaps and produced boisterous laughter. Vere did not look back
once ; she felf very ashamed still, but not of herself.

Jura did not address a word to her, except when they had
approached the steps of the Ch^llct Ludoff ; then he said, somewhat
sheepishly, — “ I say — if she’s nasty don’t you mind. She can be j
but it soon blows over ”

Vere was silent.

“Won’t you come out to-day?” he pursued. “I do so wish
you would. It’s my tub, you know, and you would like it. Do
come ? ”

“Where?”

“ On my yacht. We are going to picnic at Villiers. . The
Grand Duchess is coming, and she is great fun, when she isn’t
too drunk. Why shouldn’t you come ? It seems to me you are
shut up like a nun. It’s not fair.”

“ My mother does not wish me to come anywhere,” said Vere
dreamily, heeding him very little. “ There is the house. Go back
to them. Lord Jura, Thanks.”

Jura went back; but not until he had sent her up a pretty
little breakfast, and the most innocent of his many French novels.

“It is a beastly shame,” he said, as he walked towards the
swimmers over the sands.

Correze, meanwfiile, who had resisted all entreaties to bathe,
and all invitations to pass the day on the “ Ephemeris,” wended
his way slowly towards his hotel.

“ She has claws, that pretty cat,” he said to himself, thinking

40 MOTES.

of Lady Dolly. He had never very much liked her, and he
detested her now in a petulant impetuous way that n^v and thou
broke up the sunny softness of his temper.

“How sweet she is now; sweet as the sweetbriar, an^ a?
healthy,” he thought to himself. “ How clear the soul, HSw cloa^
the eyes! If only that would last! But one little year in tlie
world, and it will be all altered. She will have gained some chic,
no doubt, and some talent and tact; she will wear higli-hcck?cl
shoes, and she will have drawn in her waist, and learned how to
•porter le sein cn ojfrande, and learned how to make those grand grey
eyes look languid, and lustrous, and terrible. Oh yes, she will
have learned all that. But then, alas ! alas I she will have learned
so much too. She will have learned what the sickly sarcasms
mean, and the wrapt-up pruriencies intend, and what women and
men are wbrth, and how politics are knavish tricks, and the value
of a thing is just as much as it will bring, and all the rest of the
dreary gospel of self. What a pity ! what a pity ! But it is
always so. I dare say she wiU never stoop to folly as her jiretty
mother does; but the bloom will go. She will be surprised,
shocked, pained ; then, little by little, she will get used to it all —
they all do — and then the world will have her, body and soul, and
perhaps will put a bit of ice where that tender heart now beats.
She will be a great lady, I dare say— a very great lady — nothing
worse, very likely; but, all the same, my sweetbriar will be
withered, and my white wild rose will be dead — and what will it
matter to me? I dare say I shall be a musical box with a broken
spring, lying in a dust of dried myrtle and musty laurels I ”

Lady Dolly danced, floated, bobbed like a cork, drifted languidly
with her arms above her head, dived, and disappeared with only
the rosy soles of her feet visible — did everything that a pretty
woman and a good swimmer can do in shallow smooth water, with
no breeze to mar her comfort. But she was in a very bad temper
all the time.

Jura did not improve 'it, when she came out of the water, by
asking her, again, to let her daughter go with them in the
“ Ephemeris.”

“ Au grand jamais 1 ” said Lady Dolly, quite furiously. “ After
such an exhibition of herself with a singer ! Are you mad ? ”

She went home furious ; changed her wet stripes for a yachting
dress in sullen silence ; refused to see the German governess, or to
allow Vere’s door to be opened till she should return in the evening,
and went down to the yacht in a state of great irritation, with a
charming costume, all white serge and navy Mue satin, with anchor
buttons in silver, and a Norwegian belt hung with everything that
the mind of man could imagine as going on tot a girdle.

The “ Ephemeris” was one of the best yachts on the high seas ;
had a good cook, wonderful wines, a piano, a library, a cabin of
rosewood and azure, and deck hammocks pf silk. NevertheUss

Moma.

41

everything seemed to go wrong on board of her that day— at least
to Lady l^lly. They got becalmed, and stuck stupidly still, wliil^
the steam yachts were tearing ahead in a cruel and jeering manner;
then the sea got rough all in a moment ; the lobster salad disagreed
with her, or something did; a spiteful stiff wind rose; and tlic
Grand Duchess borrowed her cigarette case and ncyer returned it,
and of course could not be asked for it, and it contained the only
verbena-scented papeUtos that there were on board. Then Jura
was too attentive to the comfort of another woman, or she fancied,
at any rate, that he was ; and none of her especial pets were there,
so she could not inake reprisals as she wdsned ; and Corr^ze had
obstinately and obdurately refused to come at all. Not that she
cared a straw about Correze, but she hated being refused.

“What a wax you’re in, Dolly!” said Lord Jura, bringing her
some iced drinks and peaches.

“ When I’ve had three mad people sent to me I” she cried in a
rage. “And I’ll be obliged to you. Jack, not to use slang to me**

Lord Jura whistled and went aft.

“ What a boor he grows 1 ** thought Lady Dolly ; and the
“ Eph era oris ” was pitching, and she hated pitching, and the little
Due de Dinant was not on board because Jack wouldn’t have him ;
and she felt ill-used, furious, wretched, and hated the cook lor
making the lobster salad, and Vero for having been born,

“ A hoy Wouldn’t have been half so bad,” she thought. “ He'd
have been always away, and they’d have put him in the army.
Jkit a girl I It’s all very easy to say marry her, but she hasn’t
any money, and the Mull people won’t give her any, and my own
[)eoplo can’t, and as for Mr. Vanderdecken, one might as well try to
get blood out of a flint ; and they may say what they like, hut all
men want money when they marry nowadays, even when they’ve
got liCLips more than they know what to do with themselves.
What a horrid woman the Grand Duchess is! She’s drunk already,
and it isn’t tlireo o’clock ! ”

“ She’s going splendidly now,” said Jura, meaning the
“ Ephemeris,” that plunged and reared as if she were a mare in-
stead of a schooner ; and the fresh sou’easter that had risen sent
her farther and farther westward towards the haze of distant seas.

“I believe we’re goin^ straight to America! what idiocy is
yachting ! ” said Lady Dolly savagely, as the wind tore at her tiny
multitudinous curls.

Meanwhile, Vere, in religious obedience, had gone to the little
chamber that was called by courtesy at the OhMet Ludoff a study,
and submitting to be locked in, remained happy in the morning’s
j^^jlden dream of sunshine, of song, of the sea, of the summer. She
had found her lost Northumbrian safe, but in agonies of terror and
self-reproach, and the amiable German for once very seriously
angry. But Vere was not to be ruffled or troubled; she smiled at
all reproof, scarcely hearing it, aud put her cabbage rose and her

42 motes.

sprigs of lavender in water. Then she fell fast aslee|) on a couch,
from fatigue and the warmth of the Norman sun, and flreamed of
the blue gentian of the Alps that she had never seen, and of the
music of the voice of Corrdze.

When she awoke some hours had passed — the clock told her it
was two. She never thought of moving from her prison. The
ricketty white and gold door would have given way at a push, but
to her it was inviolate. She had been reared to give obedience in
the spirit as well as the letter.

She thought no one had ever had so beautiful a day as this
morning of hers. She would have believed it a dream, only there
were her rose and the homely heads of the lavender.

The German brought Euclid and Sophocles into the prison-
chamber, but Vere put them gently away.

“ I cannot study to-day," she said. It was the first time in her
life that she had ever said so.

The Fraulein went away^ weeping, and believing that the
heavens would fall. Vere, with her hands clasped behind her
liead, leaned back and watched the white clouds come and go above
the sea, and fancied the air was still full of that marvellous and
matchless voice which had told her at last all that music could be.

** He is the angel Raphael 1 " she said to herself. It seemed to
her that he could not be mere mortal man. ^

Her couch was close to the glass doors of the room, and they
opened into one of the scroll-work balconies which embroidered the
fantastic front of the Chdlet Ludoff. The room was nominally
upstairs, but literally it was scarcely eight feet above the ground
without.

It was in the full hot sunshine of early afternoon when the
voice she dreamed of said softly, Mademoiselle Herbert I ”

VerG roused herself with a start, and saw the arm of Corr^ze
leaning on the balcony and his eyes looking at her ; he was stand-
ing on the stone perron below.

“I came to bid you firewell,” he said softly. “ I go to Germany
to-niglit. You are a captive, I know, so I dared to speak to you
thus.” ^ ^

“ You go away ! ”

To the girl it seemed as if darkness fell over the sea and shore.

“ Ah 1 we princes of art are but slaves of the ring after all.
Yes, my engagements have ’ been made many months ago : to
Baden, to Vienna, to Moscow, to Petersburg; then Paris and
London once more. It may be long ere we meet, if ever we do,
and I dare to call myself your friend, though you never saw my
face until this morning.^* ^

** You have been so good to me,” murmured Vere ; and then
stopped, not knowing what ailed her in the sudden sense of sorrow,
loss, and pain, which came over her as she listened.

laughed Corrte, lifting himself a little higher,

Moma.

48

and leaning mofe easily on the iron of the balcony. “ I found you
a pair of wd0den shoes, a cup of milk, and a cabbage rose. Sorry
things to offer to an enchanted princess who had missed her road !
My dear, few men will not * be willing to be as good to you as you
will let them be. You are a child. You do not know your power.
I wonder what teachers you will have? I wish you could go
untaught, but there is no hope of that.”

Yere was silent. She did not understand what he meant. She
understood only that ho was going far away — this brilliant and
beautiful stranger who had come to her with the morning sun.

“ Mademoiselle Herbert,” continued Corr^ze, “ I shall sound
like a preacher, and I am but a graceless singer, but try and keep
yourself ‘ unspotted from the world.* Those are holy words, and
1 am not a holy speaker, but try and remember them, ^J’his world
you will be launched in does no woman good. It is a world of
moths. Half the moths are burning themselves in feverish frailty,
tlie other half are corroding ahd consuming all that they touch.
Do not become of either kind. You “are made for something better
than a moth. You will be tempted ; you will be laughed at ; you
will be surrounded with the most insidious sort of evil example,
namely, that which does not look like evil one whiVmore than the
belladonna berry looks like death. The women of your time are
not, perhaps, ^le worst the world has seen, but they are certainly
the most contemptible. They have dethfoned grace; they have
driven out honour; they have succeeded in making men ashamed
of the sex of their mothers ; and they have set up nothing in the
stead of all they have destroyed except a feverish frenzy for amuse-
iiiciit and an idiotic imitation of vice. You cannot understand
now, but you will see it — too soon. They will try to make you
like them. Do not let them succeed. You have truth, innocence,
and serenity — treasure thorn. The women of your day Avill ridicule
you, and tell you it is an old-fashioned triad, out of date like the
Graces; but do not listen. It is a triad without which no woman
is truly beautiful, and without which no man's love for her can bo
pure. I would fain say more to you, but I am afraid to tell you
what you do not know ; and woe to those by whom such know-
ledge first comes ! Mon en/ant, adieu.’*

Ho had laid a bouquet of stepbanotis and orchids on the sill of
the window at her feet, and had dropped out of sight before she
had realised his farewell.

When she strained her eyes to look for him, he had already
disappeared. Tears blinded her sight, and fell on the rare blossoms
of his gift.

" I will try — I vgll try to be what be wishes,” she murmured
to the flowers. ** If only I knew better what he meant.”

The time soon came when she knew too well what he meant.

Now she sat with the flowers in her lap and wondered wearily,
and sobbed silently, as if her heart would break. *

Corr^ze was gone.

MOTHS.

a

CUAPTEll IV.

At sunset Lady Dolly returned, out of temper. Tlicy had been
becalmed again for two hours, the sea all of a sudden becoming
like oil, just to spite her, and they had played to while away the
time, and the Grand Duchess had won a great deal of her money,
besides smoking every one of her cigarettes and letting the ca.se
fall through the hatchway.

“ I will never go out with that odious Russian again — ncvei* !
the manners of a cantinihre and the claws of a croupier ! ” she said
in immeasurable disgust of the august lady whom she had idolised
in the morning; and she looked in at the little study, when she
reached home, to allay her rage with making some one uncom-
fortable.

“ Arc you sufficiently ashamed of yourself, Vera ? ” she said as
she enten.d.

Verc rose, rather uneasily, and with soft sad dewy ej’-os.

'' Why should I bo ashamed, mother?” she said sim 2 ^ 1 y.

“ Why ? itfk^ f you ask why ? after comiu’omising yourself, as
you did this morning?”

“Compromise?”

Vero had never heard the word. Women who 'were compro-
mised were things that had never been heard of at Bulmcr.

“ Do not repeat what 1 say. It is the rudest thing you can
do,” said her mother sharply. “Yes, compromised, hideously
compromised — and with Correze, of all persons in tho world ! You
must have been mad I ”

Verc looked at her steidianotis and orchids, and her young face
grow almost stern.

“ If you mean I did anything wrong, I did no wrong. It was
all accident, and no one could have been so kind as — he— was.”

The car of Lady Dolly, quick at such signs, caught the little
pause before the pronoun.

“ The world never believes in accidents,” she said ehillily,
“You had better understand that for the future. To be seen
coming home in a boat early in the morning all alone with such a
man as Correze would be enough to ruin any girl at the outset oi
lier life — to ruin her ! ”

Vero’s eyes opened in bewildered surprise. She could not
follow her mothers thoughts at all, nor could she see where she
had been in any error.

“ Corr5zo, of all men upon earth ! ” echoed^ her mother. “ Good
heavens I do you know he is a singer ? ”

“ Yes,” said Vere softly; hearing all around her as she spoke
the sweet liquid nmlody of that perfect voice which had called the
skylai’k “ a littlo brother,”

MOTHS.

46

“A great singer, 1 grant; the greatest, if you like, hut still a
singer, and 4 man u'itli a hundred love affairs in every capital ho
enters I And to come home a/one with such a man after hours
spent alone with him. It ‘was madness, Vera ; and it was worse,
it was forward, impudent, unmaidenly I ”

The girl’s pale face flushed ; she lifted her head with a certain
indignant pride.

“ You may say what you will, mother,” she said quietly. “ But
that is very untrue.”

‘'Don’t dare to answer said Lady Dolly. "I tell you it
Avas disgraceful, disgraceful, and goodness knows how ever I shall
explain it away. Helene has been telling the story to everybody,
and given it seven-leagued boots already. True! ‘who cares what
is true or what is not true — it is what a thing looks ! , I believe
everybody says you had come from Ilavre with Corr 6 ze ! ”

Vere stood silent and passive, her eyes on her stephanotis and
orcliids.

“Where did you get those extrafvagant flowers? Surely Jack
never ” said Lady Dolly suspiciously.

“ lie brought them,” answered Vere.

“ Correze ? Whilst I was away ? ”

“ Yes. He spoke to me at the balcony.”

“Well, my dear, you do Bulmer credit! No Spanish or
Italian heroiu5 out of his own operas couW conduct herself more
audaciously on the first day of her liberty. It is certainly what
1 ahvaj^s thought would come of your grandmother’s mode of
education. Well, go upstairs in your bedroom and do not loavo it
until I send for you. No, you can’t take flowers upstairs ; they
are very unwholesome — as unwholesome as the kindness of
Correze.”

Vere wont, wistfully regarding her treasures ; but she had
kept the faded rose and the lavender in her hand unnoticed.

“After all, I caro most for these,” she thought; the homely
seaborn things that had been gathered after the songs.

When the door had closed on her Lady Dolly rang for her
muUre dlwtel.

“ Pay the Praulein Schroder three months* salary, and send her
away by the first steamer ; and pay the English servant whatever
she wants and send her by the first steamer. Mind they are both
gone when I wake. And I shall go to Deauville the day after
to-morrow ; probably I shall never come back here,”

The official bowed, obedient.

As she passed throughTier drawing-rooms Lady Dolly took up
the bouquet of Correze and went to her own chamber.

“ Pick me out the Best of those flowers,” she said to her maid,
“ and stick them about all over me ; here and there, you know.”

She was going to dine with the Duchesso da Sonnaz at
Deauville.

i6 M0TS8.

As she Went to her carriage* the hapless German,, quivering and
sobbing, threw herself in her path.

** Oh, miladi I miladi I ** she moaned. “ It cannot bo true
You send mo not away thus from the child of my heart ? Ten
years have I striven to write the will of God, and the learning that
is better than gold, on that crystal pure mind, and my life, and my

brain, and my soul I do give ”

“ You should have done your duty," said Lady Dolly, wrapping
herself up and hastening on. And you can't complain, my good
Schroder; you have got three months* in excess of your wages,"
and she drew her swan's-down about her and got into her
carriage.

“ Now, on my soul, that was downright vulgar,” muttered John
Jura. “ Hang it all ! it was vulgar 1 "

But he sighed as he said it to himself, for his experience had
taught him that high-born ladies could be very vulgar when they
were moved to be ill-natured.

Corr^ze was at the villa, .

She saw him a moment before dinner, and gave him her
prettiest smile.

“ Oh, Corr^ze I what flowers ! I stole some of them, you sec.
You would turn my child’s head. I am glad you are going to
Baden!"

He laughed, and said something graceful and novel, turned on
the old mater pukhra, filia pulchrior.

The dinner was not too long, and was very gay. After it
everybody wandered out into the gardens, which were hung with
coloured lanq)s and had musicians hidden in shrubberies, dis-
coursing Weet [sounds to rival the nightingales. The light was
subdued, the air delicious, the sea glimmered phosphorescent and
starlit at the end of dusky alleys and rose-hung walks. Lady
Dolly wandered about with Sergius Zourofif and others, and felt
quite romantic, whilst John Jura yawned and sulked; she never
allowed him to do anything else while she was amusing herself,
Oorrdze joined her and her Kussians in a little path between
walls of the quatre-saison rose and a carpet of velvety turf. The
stars sparkled through the rose-leaves, the sound of the sea stole
up the silent little alley. Lady Dolly looked very jjretty in a
dress of dead white, with the red roses above her and their dropped
leaves at her feet. She was smoking, which was a pity — the
cigarette did not agree with the roses,

** Madame," cried Correze, as he sauntered on and disengaged
her a little from the others, “ I have never seen anything so ex-
quisite as your young daughter. Will you believe that I mean
no compliment when I say so ? "

** My dear Correze I She is only a child ! "

‘*,She is not a child. What would you say, madame, if I told
you that for full five minutes. I had the madness to think to-day

MOTHS. 47

that I would }^y my forfeit to Batfen and Vienna for the sake of
staying lier^

“Heaven forbid you should do any such thing I You would
turn her head in a week ! ”

“ What would you say, madame,” he continued with a little
laugh, disregarding her interruption, “what would you say if I
told you that I, Oorreze, had actually had the folly to fancy for
five minutes that a vagabond nightingale might make his nest
for good in one virgin heart ? What would you say, miladi ? **

“My dear Correze, if you were by any kind of possibility
talking seriously ”

“ I am talking quite seriously— or let us suppose that I am.
What would you say, miladi ? ”

“I should say, my dear Oorreze, that you are too entirely
captivating to be allowed to say such things even in ah idle jest,
and that you would be always most perfectly charming in every
capacity but one.”

“ And that one is ? - ,

“ As a husband for anybody I **

“I suppose you are right,” said Correze with a little sigh.
“Will you let me light my cigarette at yours? ”

An hour later he was on his way to Baden in the middle hours
of the starry fragrant summer night

CHAPTER V.

Raphael de CoBukzE had said no more than the truth of him*
self that morning by the sweetbriar hedge on the edge of the
Norman cliffs.

All the papers and old documents that were needful to prove
him the lineal descendant of the greaf Savoy family of Correze
were safe in his bureau in Paris, but he spoke no more of them
than he spoke of the many love-letters and imprudent avowals that
were also locked away in caskets and cabinets in the only place
that in a way could be called his home, his apartment in the
Avenue Marigny, What was the use? All Marquis and Peer of
Savoy though he was by descent he was none the less only a
teuor singer, and in his heart of hearts he was too keenly proud to
drag his old descent into the notice of men merely that he might
look like a frivolous boaster, an impudent teller of empty talcs.
Noblesse oblige^ he had often said to himself, resisting temptation
in his oft-tempted calmer, but no one ever heard him say aloud that
paternoster of princes. His remembrance of his race had been
always with him like a talisman, but he wore it like a talisman,
secretly, and shy even of having his faith in it known.

48 MOTHS.

Oorr^ze, with all his negli|ence and gaiety, and spoilt child of
the world though he was, appraised very justly the uforth of the
world and his place in it.

IJe know very well that if a rain-storm on a windy night were
to quench his voice in his throat for ever, all his troops of lovers
and friends would fall away from him, and his name drop down
into darkness like any shooting star on an August night. He never
deceived himself.

“ 1 am only the world’s favourite plaything,” he would say to
himself. “If I lost my voice, I should be served like the nightin-
gale in Hans Andersen’s story. Oh I I do not blame the world —
things are always so ; only it is well to remember it. It serves,
like Yorick’s skull, or Philip’s slave, to remind one that one is
mortal.”

The remembrance gave him force, but it also gave him a tinge
of bitterness, so far as any bitterness is ever possible to a sunny,
generous, and careless nature, and it made him before everything
an artist.

When he was very insolent to grand people — which he often
was in the caprice of celebrity — those ])eople said to one another,
“ Ah ! that is because ho thinks himself Marquis de Correze.” But
they were wrong. It was because he knew himself a great artist.

The scorn of genius is the most boundless and the most arrogant
of all scorn, and he had it in him very strongly. The w^oild said
he was extravagantly vain ; the world was wrong ; yet if ho liad
been, it would have been excusable. Women had thrown them-
selves into his arms from his earliest youth for sake of his beautiful
face, before his voice had been heard; and wdien his voice had
captured Europe there was scarcely any folly, any madness, any
delirium, any shame that women had not been ready to rush int(/
for his sake, or for the mere sight of him and mere echo of his
song.

There is no fame on earth so intoxicating, so universal, so ener-
vating, as the fame of a great singer; as it is the most uncertain
and unstable of all, the most evanescent and nmst fugitive, so by
compensation is it the most delightful and the most gorgeous ;
rouses the multitude to a height of rapture as no other art can do,
and makes the dull and vapid crowds of modern life hang breath-
less on one voice, as in Greece, under the violet skies, men hearkened
to the voice of Pindar or of Sappho.

The world lias grown apathetic and purblind. Critics still rave
and q^uarrel before a canvas, but the nations do not care ; quarries of
marble are hewn into various shapes, and the throngs gape before
^ them and are indilTcrciit ; writers are so many that their writings blend
111 the public mind in a confused phaiitasma^ria where the colours
have run into one another and the lines are all waved and indis-
tinct ; the singer alone still keeps the old magic power, ** the beauty
. that was Athens’ and the glory that was Pome’s,” still holds the

MOTEB.

49

divine caducous, still sways the vast? thronged auditorium, till the
myriads hoi(^ their breath like little children in delight and awe.
The great singer alone has the old magic sway of funic ; and if he
close his lips *‘the gaiety of nations is eclipsed,” and the world
seems empty and silent like a wood in which the birds are all dead.

It is a supremo power, and may well intoxicate a man.

Correze had been as little delirious as any who iiave drunk of
the philtre of a universal fame, although at times it had been too
strong for him, and had made him audacious, capricious, inconstant,
and guilty of some follies; but his life was x>ure from any dark
reproach.

" Soyez gentilhomme,'^ his father had said to him in the little
hut on tho Pennino Alps, with the snow-fields severing them from
all other life than their own, and had said it never thinking that
his boy would bo more than at best a village priest or teacher ; tho
bidding had sunk into the^mind of the child, and the man had not
forgotten it now that Europe was at his feet, and its princes but
servants who had to wait his time ; ;and he liked to make them
wait. “ Perliajis that is not gentilhomme^ he would say in reproach
to himself, hut it diverted him and he did it very often ; most often
when he thought angrily that he was but like Hans Andersen’s
nightingale, the jewelled one, that was thrown aside and despised
when once its spring was snapped and broken. If he wore only
that, he was n(^ at the moment when emperor and court thought
nothing in heaven or on earth worth hearing but the jewelled night-
ingale, and “ the crowds in the streets hummed his song.” Yet as
the night train bore him through the level meadows, and corn-fields
glistening in the moonlight, and the hush of a sleeping world, his »
eyes were dim and his heart was heavy, and ,on the soft cushions
of the travelling bed they had given him he could not find rest.

The moths will corrupt her,” he thought, sadly and wistfully.

“ The moths will cab all that fine delicate feeling away, little by little ;
the moths of the world will eat the unselfishness first, and then tho
innocence, and then the honesty, and then the decency ; no one
will see them eating, no one will see the havoc being wrought ; but
little by little the fine fabric will go, and in its place will be dust.
Ah, the pity of it ! The pity of it I The webs come out of the
great weaver’s loom lovely enough, but the moths of tho world eat
them all. One weeps for the death of children, but perhaps the
change of them into callous men and worldly women is a sadder
thing to see after all.”

His heart was heavy.

Was it love? No; be fancied not; it could not be. Love
yrith him— an Almaviva as much off the stage as on it — had been
a charming, tumultuous, victorious thing ; a concession rather to
the weakness of the women who sought him than to his own ; the
chief, indeed, but only one amongst many other distractions and
triumphs.

60

MOTEB.

It was not love that madS his heart go out to -that fair-haired
child, with the thoughtful questioning eyes. It wa^s rather pity,
tenderness, reverence for innocence, rage against the world which
would so soon change her ; — poor little moth, dreaming of flying up
to heaven’s light, and bom to sink into earth’s commonest fires ! ^

Corrdze did not esteem women highly. They had caressed him
into satiety, and wooed him till his gratitude was more than half
contempt ; but in his innermost heart, where his old faiths dwelt
unseen by even his best friends, there was the fancy of what a
woman should be, might be, unspotted by the world, and innocent
in thought, as well as deed.

Such a woman had seemed to him to be in the girl whom he
had found by the sea, as the grand glory of the full white rose lies
folded in the blush-rose bud.

It was too absurd I

Her mother had been right, quite right.

The little frivolous, artificial woman, with her perruque and her
had said all that society would say. She had been wise,
and he, in a passing moment of sentiment, a fool. He had scarcely
really considered the full meaning of his own words, and where
they would have led him had they been taken seriously.

He thought now of all the letters lying in those cabinets and
caskets at Paris.

“What a burnt-sacrifice of notepaper I should have had to
make I ” he said to himself, and smoked a little, and tried to ridicule
himself.

Was he, CorrSze, the lover of great rulers of society, the hero of
a hundred and a thousand intrigues and romances, in love with a
mere child, because she had serious eyes and no shoes and stock-
ings ? bewitched by a young girl who had sat half an hour beside
him by a sweetbriar hedge on a cliff by the sea? It was too
absurd.

From Baden there had come an impatient summons from a
d^k-haired duchess of the Second Empire, who fancied that she
reigned over his life because he reigned over hers like a fatality, an
imperious and proud woman whom the lamps in the Avenue
Marigny had shone on as she stole on foot, muffled and veiled, to
hide her burning face on his breast ; ho thought of her where she
was waiting for him, and a little shudder of disgust went over him.

He threw open the window of his bed carriage, and leaned his
head out, to meet the midnight Vind.

The train was passing a little village, a few cottages, a pond, a
mill, a group of willows silvery in the starlight. Prom the little
green gardens there came a scent of sweetbriar and hedge roses.

“ Shall I smell that smell all my life ? ” he thought impatiently.

MOTHS.

61

CHAPTER VI.

Lady Dolly had a very dear friend. Of course she had five
hundred dear fiiends, but this one she was really fond of; that is
to say, she never said anything bad of her, and only laughed at her
good-naturedly when she had left a room ; and this abstinence is as
strong a mark of sincerity nowadays, as dying for another used to
be in the old days of strong feelings and the foolish expression of
them..

This friend was her dear Adine, otherwise Lady Stoat of
Stitchley, who had just won the honour of the past year’s season
by marrying her daughter (a beauty) to a young marquis, who,
with the small exceptions of being a drunkard, a fool, and a brute,
wag everything that a mother’s soul could desire; and all the
mothers’ souls in the great world had accordingly burned for him
passionately, and Lady Stoat had won him.

Lady Stoat was as much revered as a maternal model of excel-
lence in her time as the mother of the Gracchi in hers. She was a
gentle-looking woman, with a very soft voice, which she never
raised under any provocation. She had a will of steel, but she
made it look like a blossoming and pliant reed; she was very
religious and strongly ritualistic.

When Lady Dolly awoke the next morning, with the vague
remembrance of something very unpleasant having happened to her,
it was to this friend that she fleci for advice as soon as she was
dressed ; having for that purpose to drive over to Deauville, where
Lady Stoat, who thought Tiouville vulgar, had a charming little
l)lace, castellated, coquettish, Gothic, Chinese, Moorish, all kinds of
things, in a pretty pll-mell of bonbon-box architecture, set in a
frame of green turf and laurel hedges and round-headed acacias,
and with blazing geranium beds underneath its gilded balconies
and marqueterie doori Lady Dolly had herself driven over in the
Due de Dinant’s 'panier with his four ponies, and while he went to
find out some friends and arrange the coming races, she took her
own road to the Maison Perle.

Adine always knows,” she thought. She was really fond of
her Adine, who was many years older than herself. But for her
Adine, certain little bits of nonsense and imprudence in Lady
Dolly’s feverish little life might have made people talk, and given
trouble to Mr. Vanderdeoken, absorbed as he might be in Java,
Japan, or Jupiter.

Lady Stoat of Stil^chley was one of those invaluable characters
who love to do good for good’s own sake, and to set things straight
for the mere pleasure of being occupied. As some persons of an
old-maidish or old-bachelor turn of mind will go far out of their
way to smooth a crease or remove a crumb, though neither be

MOTm

52

maning their own property, so would Lady Stoat go far out of her
way to prevent a scandal, reconcile two enemies, or cipar a tangled
path. It was her way of amusing herself. She lad a genius for
management. She was a clever tactician, and her tactics interested
her, and employed her time agreeably. If any one in her world
wanted a marriage arranged, a folly prevented, a d'sgracc concealed,
or a refractory child brought to reason, Lady Stoat of Stitchley
would do it in the very best possible manner.

“It is only my duty,” she would say in her hushed melodious
monotonous voice, and nearly everybody thought Lady Stoat the
modern substitute of a saint on earth.

To this saint now went Lady Dolly with her troubles and her talc.

“What can I do with her, dearest? "she cried plaintively, in
the pretty Utile mornwg-room, whose windows looked over the
geranium beds to the grey sea.

Lady Stoat was doing crewel work ; a pale, slight, gracefully
made woman with small straight features, and the very sweetest
and saddest of smiles. •

“What young men are there?" said Lady Stoat, now in
response, still intent on her crewel work. “I have not thought
about them at all since the happiness of my own treasure was
secured. By-the-by, I heard from Gwen this morning; she tells
me she has hopes — Our Mother in heaven has heard iiiy prayers.
Imagine, love, my becoming a grandmama ! It is what I long so
for ! — just a silly old grandmama spoiling all her pets I I feel 1 was
born to be a grandmama ! ”

“ 1 am so glad, how very charming I ” murmured Lady Dolly,
vaguely and quite indifferent. “ I am so terribly afraid Yore won’t
please, and I am so afraid of this atFair with Correze."

“What affair? with whom? "asked Lady Stoat of Stitchley,
waking from her dreams of being a grandmama. '

Whereon she told it, making it look very odd and very bad
indeed, in the unconscious exaggeration which accompanied Lady
Dolly’s talk, as inevitably as a great streak of foam precedes and
follows the track of a steamer.

Lady Stoat was rather amused than shocked.

“ It is very like Correze, and he is the most dangerous man in
the world ; everybody is in love with him ; Gwendolen was, but
all that is nothing ; it is not as if he were one of us,”

“ He is one of us I He goes everywhere ! "

“Oh! goes! — well; that is because people like to ask him —
society is a pigstye — but all that does not alter his being a singer.”

“ He is a marquis, you know, they say ! ”

“ All singers are marquises, if you like ^o believe them. My
dear Dolly, you cannot be serious in being afraid of Correze ? Jl’
you are, all the more reason to marry her at once.”

** She is not the style that anybody likes at all nowadays,”
replied Lady Dolly, in a sort of despair. “ She is not the style of

MOTES.

63

the day at all, you know. She has ??reat natural distinction, but I
don’t think neople care for that, and they like chioi. She will
always look like a gentlewoman, and they like us best when we ,
don’t. I have a conviction that men will be afraid of her. Is
there anything more fatal ? Vere will never look like a beUe petitey
in a tca>gown, and smoke, never! She has gone a hun fired years
back, being brought up by that horrid old woman. You could
fancy her going to be guillotined in old lace like Marie- Antoinette.
What can 1 do ? ”

“ Keep her with you six months, dear,” said the friend, who
was a w’oinan of some humour. ** And I don’t think poor Marie-
Antoinette had any lace left to wear.”

Of course I must keep her with mo,” said Lady Dolly with
exasperation, who was not a woman of humour, and who did not
see the jest.

Lady Stoat reflected a moment. She liked arranging things,
Avhether they closely concerned her or not.

“ There is the Chambr6o’s son ? ” ^she said hesitatingly.

“I know! But they will want such a dower, and Vere has
nothing — nothing ! ”

But if she be a beauty? ”

'' She will be beautiful ; she won’t be a beauty ; not in the way
men like now. She will always look cold.”

Do tiny dislike that? Not in their wwes, I think ; my Gwen
looks very cold,” said her friend ; then added with an innocent im-
passiveness, “You might marry her to Jura.”

Lady Dolly laughed and coloured.

‘'Poor Jack! He hates the very idea of marriage; I don’t
think he will ever ”

“ They all hate it,” said Lady Stoat tranquilly. “ But they do
it when they are men of position ; Jura will do it like the rest.’
What do you think of Serge Zouroff ? ”

Lady Dolly this time did not laugh ; she turned white under-
neath Piver’s bloom ; her pretty sparkling eyes glanced imcasily.

“ Zourofl’ ! ” she repeated vaguely, “ ^urofT ! ”

“ I think 1 should try,” answered Lady Stoat calmly. “ Yes;

1 do think I should try. By the way, take her to Felicitd ; you
arc going there, are you not ? It would he a great thing for you,
dear, to marry her this year ; you wmuld find it such a bore iu the
season ; don’t I know what it is I And for you, so young as you
are, to go to halls with a demotsel/e d marier ! — my poor little puss,
you would die of it.”

“ I am sure I shall as it^is I ” said Lady Dolly ; and her nerves
gave way, and she cried.

“ Make Zouroff m^rry her,” said Lady Stoat soothingly, as if
she were pouring out drops of chloral for a fretful child.

“ Make Zouroff 1 ” echoed Lady Dolly, with a certain intonation
that led Lady Stoat to look at her quickly.

64 M0TB8.

‘‘Has she done naughty filings that she has not told me/’
thought her confidante. “ No, I do not fancy so. Poqj: little pussy !
she is too silly not to he transparent.”

Aloud, she said merely—

” Zouroff is middle-aged now; Nadine would he glad to see him
take any one; she would not oppose it. He must marry some
time, and I don’t know anybody else so good as he.”

** Good ! ” ejaculated Lady Dolly faintly. She was still startled
and agitated, and strove to hide that she was so. “ Vere would
never,” she murmured; “you don’t know her; she is the most
dreadful child ”

“ You must bring her to me,” said Lady Stoat.

She was very successful with girls. She never scolded them ;
she never ridiculed them ; she only influenced them in a gentle,
imperceptible, sure way that, little by little, made them feel that
love and honour were silly things, and that all that really mattered
was to have rank and to be rich, and to be envied by others.

Lady Stoat never said this; never said, indeed, anything
approaching it, but all girls that she took any pains with learned
it by heart, nevertheless, as the gospel of their generation.

It was her own religion ; she only taught what she honestly
believed.

A little comforted, Lady Dolly left her calming presence ; met
licr little duke and breakfasted with him merrily at an hotel, and
drove back to her own chalet to dress for a dinner at the Maison
Normande.

The doors of Felicitd would not open until the first day of Sep-
tember, and there were still some dozen days of August yet to
pass, and on those days Vere was to bo seen occasionally by her
mother’s side on the beach, and in the villas, and at the races at
Deauville, and was clad by the clever directions of Adrienne in
charming, youthful dresses as simple as they were elegant. She
was taken to the Casino, where the high-born young girls of her
own age read, or worked, or played with the petits chevanx ; she
was made to walk up and down the planks, where her innocence,
brushed the shoulders of Casse-une-Croute, the last new villany out
in woman, and her fair cheeks felt the same sunbeams and breeze
that fell on all the faded pSches d quinze sous. She was taken to
the hal des hihis, and felt a pang that was older than her years at
seeing those little frizzed and furbelowed flirts of five, and those
vain little simpering dandies of three. *

“Oh, the poor, poor little children J” she thought; “ they will
never know what it is to be young ! ” '

She, even in monastic dd Bulmer, had been left a free, open-air,
natural, honest child’s life. Her own heart here was oppressed and
lonely. She missed her faithful old friends ; she took no pleasure
in the romp and racket that Ws round her ; she understood very
little of all that she saw, but ^e mere sight of it hurt her. Society,

M0TJB8.

65

to this untutored child of the Northumbrian moors, looked so gro-
tesque and |o vulgar. This Trouville mob of fine ladies and
adventuresses, princes and blacklegs, ministers and dentists, reign-
ing sovereigns and queens of the theatres, seemed to her a Satur-
nalia of Folly, and its laugh hurt her more than a blow would have
done.

Her mother took her out hut little, and the less that she went
the less troubled she was. That great mass of varicoloured, noisy
life, so pretty as a spectacle, but so deplorable as humanity, dis-
mayed and offended her. She heard that these ladies of Deauville,
with their painted brows, their high voices, their shrill laughter,
their rickety heels, were some of the greatest ladies of Europe ;
hut, to the proud temper and the delicate taste of the child, they
seemed loathsome.

“ You are utterly unsympathetic ! ” said her mother, tiisgusted,
“ frightfully unsympathetic ! You are guind6e, positive, puritan 1
You have not a grain of adajitability. I read the other day some-
where that Madame Recamier, who was always called the greatest
beauty of our great-grandmothers* tfmos, was really nothing at all
to look at— quite ordinary; but she did smile so in everybody’s
fiice, and listen so to all the bores, that the world pronounced her
a second Helen. As for you— handsome though you are, and you
really arc quite beautiful, they say — ^you look so scornful of every-
thing, and so indignant at any little nongense, that I should not
wonder in the least if you never even got called a beauty at all.”

Lady Dolly paused to see the effect of the most terrible pre-
diction that it was in female power to utter. Vere was quite un-
moved ; she scarcely heard.

She was thinking of that voice, clear as the ring of gold, which
had said to her —

“ Keep yourself unspotted from the world.”

“ If the world is nothing better than this, it must be very easy
to resist it,” she thought in her ignorance.

She did not know that from these sv^tops of flattery, intrigue,
envy, rivalry, and emulation there rises a miasma which scarcely
the healthiest lungs can withstand. She did not know that though
many may be indifferent to the tempting of men, few indeed are
unpenetrable to the sneer and the smile of women ; that to live
your own life in the midst of the world is a harder thing than it
was of old to withdraw to the lliebaid; that to risk “looking
strange ” requires a courage perhaps cooler and higher than the
soldier’s or the saint’s; and that to stand away from the contact and
the custom of your “sef’ris a harder and a sterner work- than it
was of old to go into the sanctuary of La Trappe or Port Royal.

Attires temps^ au^es moeurs — but we too have our martyrs.

Felicite was a seaside ch&teau of the Princes Zouroff, which
they had bought from an old decayed French family, and had
transformed into a veritable castle of fairy-land. They came to it

MOTBB.

for about tbrco mouths in as toany years ; but for beauty and love-
liness it had no equal, even amongst the many supmer holiday-
nouses scattered up and down the green coast, from Etretat to the
Rochers de Calvados. This year it was full of people: the Prin-
cess Nadine N61agiiine was keeping open house there for her
brother Sergius ZourofF. White-sailed yachts anchored in its bay;
chasseurs in green and gold beat its woods; riding j^arties and
driving parties made its avenues bright with colour and movement;
groups like Watteau pictures wandered in its gardens ; there was a
little troupe of actors from Paris for its theatre ; life went like a
song; and Serge Zouroif would have infinitely preferred to be
alone with some handsome Tschigan women and many flagons of
brandy.

kladamo Nelaguino was a little woman, who wove a wig that
had little pretence about it; and smoked all day long, and read
salelSs with zest, and often talked them ; yet Madame N^laguine
could bo a power in politics when she chose, could cover herself
witli diamonds and old laces, and put such dignity into her tiny
person that she once crushed into utter nervousness a new-made
empress, whom she considered varnish. She was wonderfully
clever, wonderfully learned ; she was cunning, and she could be
cruel, yet she had in her own way a kind heart ; she was a great
musician and a great mathematician; she had been an ambassa-
dress, and had distinguished herself at great courts,^, She had had
many intrigues of all kiuds, but had never been compromised by
any one of them. She was considerably older than her brother,
and seldom approved of him.

“ On pent se debaucher, mah on doit se dSaucher avec de Vespritf'
she would say : and the modern ways of vice seemed to her void of
wit. “ You are not even amused,” she would add. " If you were
amused one could comprehend, but you are not. You spend your
fortunes on creatures that you do not even like ; you si)cnd your
nights^ in gambling that does not even excite you ; you commit
vulgarities that do not eVen divert you, only because everybody
else does tlie same ; you caricature monstrous vices so that you
make even those no longer terrible, but ridiculous ; and if you fight
a duel you manage to make it look absurd, you take a surgeon with
you ! You have no passions. It is passion that dignifies life, and
you do not know anything about it, any of you ; you know only
infamy. And infamy is always so dull; it is never educated. Why
do you copy Yitcllius? Becausb you have; not the wit to be either
Horace or Csftsar.”

But Sergius ZourofT did not pay any heed to his cleverer sister.
Ills Uraline mines, his vast plains of wheat, his forests and farms,
his salt and his copper, and all that he owned^ were treasures well-
nigh inexhaustible, and although x^rodi^Iho was shrewd. He was
not a man to be easily ruined, and, as loig as his great wealth and
his great position gave him a place that was almost royal in the

MOTHS. 67

society of Europe, he knew very well’ that he could copy Vitclliiis
as lie chose w^ihout drawing any chastisement on him. In a cold
and heavy way he had talent, and with that talent he contrived to
indulge all excesses in any vice that tempted him, yet remain
without that social stigma that has marked before now princes
wholly royal.

' Everywhere they are glad to see me, and everybody would
marry me to-morrow,” ho would say, with a shrug of his shoulders,
when his sister rebuked him.

To Felicitd drove Lady Dolly with Vere by her side. Vere had
been given a white dress and a broad hat with white drooping
feathers ; she looked very pale, her mother supposed it was with
excitement.

She thought it the moment to offer a little maternal advice.
“ Now, dear, this will bo quite going into the world for you. Do
remember one or two things. Do try to look less grave ; men hate
a serious woman. And if you want to ask anything, don't come
to mo, because I’m always busy; ask Adrienne or Lady Stoat.
You have seen what a sweet dear motherly creature she is. She
won’t mind tolling you anything. There is a charming girl there,
too, an American heiress, Fuschia Leach ; a horrible name, but a
lovely creature, and very clever. Watch her and learn all you can
from her. Tout Paris lost its head after her utterly this last
winter. She’ll marry anybody she chooses, 'Pray don’t make me
ashamed of you. Don’t be sensational, don’t be stupid, don’t bo
pedantic ; and, for mercy’s sake, don’t make any scenes. Never
look surprised; never show a dislike to anybody; never seem
shocked, if you feel so. Be civil all round, it’s the safest way in
society ; and pray don’t talk about mathematics and the Bible, I
don’t know that there’s anything more I can tell you : you must
find it^^all out for yourself. The world is like whist, reading can’t
teach it. Try not to blunder, that’s all, and — do watch Fuschia
Leach.”

** Is she so very beautiful and good ? ”

" Good ? ” echoed Lady Dolly, desorientSe and impatient. “ I
don’t know, I am sure. No, I shouldn’t think she was, by any
means. She doesn’t go in for that. She is a wonderful social
success, and men rave about her. That is what I meant. If you
watch her she will do you more good than I could if I had patience
to talk to you for ever. You will see what the girl of your time
must be if she want to please.”

Vere’s beautiful mouth curled contemptuously.

“ I do not want to please.”

“ That is an insane remark,’^ said Lady Dolly coldly. “ If you
don’t, what do you live Ibr ? ”

Vere was silent. At dark* old Bulmer she had been taught
that there were many other things to live for, but she was afraid to
say so, lest she shoidd bo pedantic ” again.

68

MOWS.

“ That is just the sort of SiiiJy tliiug I hate to hear a girl say, or
a woman either. Americans never say such tiling,” said Lady
Dolly with vivacious scorn. “It's just like your father, who
always would go out in the rain when dinner was ready, or read to
somebody who had the scarlet fever, or give the best claret to a
plough boy with a sore throat. It is silly ; it is unnatural. You
should want to please. Why were we put in this world ? ”

“ To make others happier," Vere suggested timidly, her eyes
growing dim at her father’s name.

“ Did it make me happier to have the scarlet fever brought home
to me ? '* said Lady Dolly, irrelevantly and angrily. “ That is just
like poor Vere's sort of illogical reasonings ; I remember them so
well. You are exactly like him. I despair of you, I quite despair
of you, unless Fuschia Leach can convert you."

“ Is she my ago ? ”

“ A year or two older, I think ; she is perfect now ; at five and
twenty she will bo hideous, but she will dress so well it won’t
matter. I know for a fact, ^hat sho refused your cousin Mull last
month. She was very right ; he is awfully poor. Still, she’d have
been a duchess, and her father kept a bar ; so it shows you what
sho can do.”

“ What is a bar ? ”

“Oh! pray don't keep asking me questions like that. You
make my head whirl.* A bar is where they sell things to drink ;
and her brothers have a great pig-killing place 'down west,'
wherever that is."

“ And she refused my cousin ! ”

“ Dear, yes I This is the charming topsy-turvy world we live
in — you w’ill get used to it, my dear. They made a fuss because a
tailor got to Court last year, I am sure I don’t know why they
did; if he’d been an American tailor nobody’d have said anything;
tlicy wouldn’t even have thought it odd. All the w^orld over you
meet them; they get in^thc swim somehow; they have such heaps
of money, and their women know how to wear things. They
always look like — what they shouldn’t look like — to be sure ; but
so most of us do, and men prefer it.”

Vere understood not at all ; but she did not venture again to
ask for an explanation.

Her mother yawned and brushed the flies away pettishly, and
called to Lord Jura, who was riding beside their carriage, and had
lagged a trifle behind in the narrow sandy road that ran level be-
tween green hedges. The high metal roof and gilded vanes of
Fdlicite were already shining above the low rounded masses of
distant woods. It stood on the sca-coast, a little way from Villers-
sur-Mcr. *

Vere did not understand why Lord Jura always went with
them as naturally as the maids did and the dressing-boxes ; but he
was kind, if a little rough. She liked him. Only why did her

MOTHS. 59

mother call him Jack, and quarrel with him so, and yet want him
aiways with hdr ?

Vere thought about it dimly, vaguely, perplexedly, especially
when she saw the frank, blue eyes of Jura looking at herself, hard,
and long, with a certain sadness and impatience in the gaze, as if
he pitied her.

The reception at Fdlicitd seemed to Vere to be a whirl of bright
hues, pretty faces, and amiable words. The Princess Nadine
Ndlaguine was out on the terrace with her guests, and the Princess
kissed her with effusion, and told her she was like a Gainsborough
picture. The Princess herself was a fairy-like little woman, with
a bright odd Calmuck face and two little brown eyes as bright as a
marmoset’s. Vere was presented to so many people that she could
not tell one from another, and she was glad to be left in her room
while her mother, having got into a wonderful gold-embroidered
Watteau sacque that she called a tea-gown, went to rejoin the
other ladies amongst the roses and the perfumes, and the late after-
noon light.

When Vere herself, three hours later, was dressed for dinner,
and told to tap at her mother’s door, she did not feel nervous, be-
cause it was not in her nature to bo easily made so, but she felt
oppressed and yet curious.

She was going into the world.

And the counsels of Correze haunted her.

Lady Dolly said sharply, “ Como in 1 ” and Vere entering, be-
held her mother for the first time in full war-paint and panoply.

Lady Dolly looked sixteen herself. She was exquisitely
painted ; she had a gown cut en cceur v/hich was as indecent as the
heart of woman could desire ; jewels sparkled all over her ; she was a
triumph of art, and looked as exactly like Colifichet of the Bouffes
in her last now piece, as even her own soul could aspire to do.

What are you staring at, child?” she asked of Vere, who had
turned rather pale. “Don’t you think I lOok well? What is the
matter ? ”

“ Nothing,” said Vere, who could not answer that it hurt her
to SCO so much of her mother’s anatomy unveiled.

“ You louk as if you saw a ghost,” said Lady Dolly impatiently;
“ you have such a horrid way of staring. Come I ”

Vere went silently by her side down the wide staircase, lighted
by black marble negroes holding golden torches. After the silence,
the stillness, the gloom, of her Northumbrian home, with the old
servants moving slowly through the dim oak-panncllcd passages,
the brilliance, the luxury, the glittering lustre, the va et vient of
Felicitd seemed like a gbrgeous spectacle. She would have liked to
have stood on that grand staircase, amongst the hothouse flowers,
and looked on it all as on a pageant. But her mother swept on
into the drawing-rooms, and Vere hoard a little murmur qf
admiration, which she did not di*eam was for herself

eO M0TH8.

Lady Dolly in her way was an artist, and she had known the
right thing to do when she had had Vere clad in \fhite cuclicniiro,
with an old silver girdle of German work, and in the coils of her
hair a single silver arrow.

Yere was perfect in her stately, serious, yet childlike grace;
and the women watching her enter felt a pang of envy.

Sergius ZourotF, her host, advancing, murmured a ^^divinement
MU I ” and Lady Stoat, watching from a distant sofa, thought to
horsvlf, “ What a lovely creature ! really it is trying for poor little
pussy.”

Verc went in to her first great dinner. She said little or
nothing. She listened and wondered. Where she sat she could
not see her mother nor any one she knew. The young French
diplomatist who took her in tried to make himself agreeable to her,
but she replied by monosyllables. He thought how stupid these
lovely ingenues always were. He had not the open sesame of
Corr^ze to the young mute soul.

Dinner over, Lady Stoat took possession of her in the charming
motherly affectionate wny for which she was celebrated with young
girls. But even Lady Stoat did not make much way with her ;
Verc’s largo serious eyes were calmly watching everything.

“ Will you show me which is Miss Leach? ” she said suddenly.
Lady Stoat laughed and pointed discreetly with a fan.

“ Who has told you about Fuschia Leach ? ” slio said amusedly.

I will make you known to her presently ; she may be of use to
you.”

Vere’s eyes, grave as a child’s awakened out of sleep into the
glare of gas, fastened where her Ian had pointed, and studied Miss
Leach. She saw a very lovely person of transparent colouring, of
very small features, of very slight form, with a skin like delicate
porcedain, an artistic tangle of artistically coloured rod gold hair, a
tiny impertinent nose, and a wonderful expression of mingled
impudence, shrewdness, ‘audacity, and resolution. This person had
licr feet on an ottoman, her hands behind her head, a rosebud in
her mouth, and a male group around her.

“I shall not like her; I do not wish to know her,” said Vere
slowly.

“ My dear, do not say so,” said Lady Stoat. ** It will sound

like jealousy, you know — one pretty girl of another ”

She is not a lady,” said Vere once more.

There you are right,” said Lady Stoat. ''Very few people
are, my love, nowadays. But that is just the sort of thing you
must not say. It will get quoted against you, and make you,
make you — oh ! such enemies, my love I ” •

"Does it matter?” said Vere dreamily. She was wondering
what Corr^ze would have thought or did think of Miss Fuschia
Leach.

" Docs it matter to have enemies ! ” echoed Lady Stoat. “ Oh,

MOTHB.

61

my sweet Vero I ^oes it matter whether there is a pin sticking into
one all day ? h pin is a very little thing, no doubt, hut it makes
all the difference between comFort and discomfort ? ”

Slie is not a lady,” said Vere again with a passing frown on
her pretty brows.

“Oh, my dear! if you wait for that!” Lady Stoat’s smile
expressed that if she did wait for that she would be more exacting
than society. “ As for not knowing her — nonsense — you must not
object to anybody who is in the same house-party with yourself.”

“ She is exti-emely pretty,” added Lady Stoat. Those
American girls so very often are; but they are all like \X\e
de modiste. The very best of them are only very perfect likenesses
of the young ladies that try the confections on for us at Pingat’s or
Worth’s, and the dress has always a sort of look of being the first
toilette they ever had. I don’t know why, for I hear they dress
extremely well over there, and should be used to it, but it has that
look, and they never get rid of it. No, my dear, no ; you are right.
Those new people are not gentlewoman any more than men’s
modern manners are like the Broad Stone of Honour. But do not
say so. Tiiey will repeat it, and it will not sound kind, and unless
you can say what is kind, never say anything.”

“ I would rather have any one I did not respect for an enemy
than for a friend,” said Vero with a child’s obstinacy. Lady Stoat
smiled. •

“ Phrases, my love !— phrases I you have so much to loam, my
child, as yet.”

“ I will not learn of Miss Leach.”

“ Well, I do not admire her very much myself. But then
I belong to an old school, you know. 1 am ah old woman, and
have prejudices,” said Lady Stoat sweetly, “ Miss Leach has the
world at her foot, and it amuses her to kick it about like a tennis
hall, and show her ankles. I dare say you will do the same, love,
in another six months, only you will not show your ankles. All
the difference will be there.”

And then Lady Stoat, who though she called herself an old
woman would have been extremely angry if anybody else had called
her so, thought she had done enough for once for poor little pussy’s
daughter, and turned to her own little mild flirtations with a bald
and beribboned ambassador.

Vere was left alone, to look and muse.

Men glanced at her and said what a lovely child sne was ; but
they kept aloof from her. They were afraid of an ingdmej and
there was Fuschia Leach, whose laughter was ringing up to the
chandeliers and out to tho conservatories — Fuschia Leach, who had
never been an ingenue, but a coquette at three years old, and a
woman of the world at six.

Jura alone came up and seated himself by Vere. .

“ How do you like it ? ” he said with an odd little smile.

62 Moms.

“Ifc is Tery pretty to look at,” answered Vere.

** Ah, to be sure. As good as a play when you’70 new to it, and
awfully like a treadmill when you’re not. What do you think of
Puschia Leach ? ”

Vere remembered Lady Stoat^s warning, and answered merely—

“ I think she is handsome.”

" I believe you; she threw over your cousin Mull, as if he were
dirty boots ; so she does heaps of them. I don’t know what it is
myself; I think it is her cheek. I always tell Dolly so — J beg
your pardon — mean your mother.”

Vere had heard him say “ Dolly ” very often, and did not know
why he apologised.

“My mother admires her?” she said with a little interrogation
in her imice. Jura laughed.

“ Or says she does. Women always say they admire a reigning
beauty. It looks well, you know. They all swear Mrs. Dawtry
is divine, and I’m sure in their hearts they think her rather ugly
than otherwise.”

“ Who is Mrs. Dawtry ? ”

“ Don’t you know ? Good heavens I But, of course, you don’t
know anything of our world. It’s a pity you ever should. Touch
pitch — what is it the old saw says ? ”

It was the regret of Oorreze, differently worded.

“But the vrorld,'as you call it, means men'and women? It
must be what they make it. They might make it good if they
wished,” said Vere with the seriousness that her mother detested.

“But they don’t wish, you see. That is it,” said Jura with a
sigh. “ I don’t know how it is, when once you are in the swim
you can’t alter things ; you must just go along with the rest. One
docs heaps of things one hates only because others do them.”

“ That is very contemptible,” said Vere, witli the disdain that
became her very well coming on her pretty proud mouth.

“ I think we are contemptible,” said Jura moodily ; and to so
frank a confession there was no reply or retort possible, Vere
thought.

“It is strange; he said much the sailie,” she murmured, half
aloud. “ Only he said it liko a poet, and you — ^speak in such an
odd way.”

“ How do I speak ? ” asked Jura amused.

“ You speak as if words ' cost too much, and you were obliged to
use as few and choose as bald ones as you could find ; English is
such a beautiful language, if |ro^ ®ead Milton or Jeremy Taylor, or
Beaumont and Fletcher, or any^ihe old divines or dramatists ”

She stopped, because Jur^kjatughed.

“Divines and dramatist^l My dear child, we know nothing
about such things; we havb St. Albans and French adaptations;
they’re our reading of divinity and the drama. Who was * he ’ that
talked like a poet while X talk like a sweep?”

MOTHS, 63

**I did not say you talked like a sweep — and I meant the
Marquis de Coir^ze.”

“Oh! your singer? Don’t call him a Marquis. He is the
prinoe of tenors, that’s all.” '

“ He is a Marquis,” said Vere, with a certain coldness. “ They
were a very great race. You can see all about it in the * Livre
d’Or ’ of Savoy ; they were like the Marquises Costa de Beauregard,
who lost everything in ’ninety-two. You must have read M. de
Beauregard’s beautiful book, Un homme d* autrefois ?”

“ Never heard of it. Did the tenor tell you all that rubbish ? ”

“Where is mamma. Lord Jura?” said Vere. “I am tired of
sitting here.”

“'J'hat’s a facer,” thought Jura. “And, by Jove, very well
given for such a baby. I beg your pardon,” he said aloudf “ Cor-
r^ze shall be a prince of the blood, if you wish. Your mother is
over there ; but I doubt if she’ll thank you to go to her ; she’s in
the thick of it with them ; look.”

He meant that Lady Dolly was flirting very desperately, and
enjoying herself very thoroughly, having nearly as many men about
her as Miss Fuschia Leach.

Vere looked, and her eyes clouded.

“ ’J’hen I think I may go to bed. She will not miss me. Good
night.”

“ No, she woti't miss you. Perhaps other people will.”

“ There is no one I know, so how can they ? ” said Vere inno-
cently, and rose to go ; but Sergius Zouroff, who had approached in
the last moment, barred her passage with a smiling deference.

“ Your host will. Mademoiselle Herbert. Does my poor house
weary you, that you think of your own room at ten o’clock.”

“I always go to bed at ten, monsieur,” said Vere. “It is
nothing new for me.”

“ Let mo show you my flowers first,” at last said Prince Zouroff.
" You know we Bussians, born amidst snow and ice, have a passion
for tropical houses ; will you not come ? ”

He held out his arm as lie spoke. Would it be rude to refuse?
Vere did not know. She was afraid it would, as he was her host.

She laid her fingers hesitatingly on his offered arm, and was led
through the rooms by Prince Zouroff.

Fuschia Leach took her hands from behind her head, and
stared ; Lady Dolly would have turned pale, if she had not been so
well painted ; Lady Stoat put her eyeglass up, and smiled.

Prince Zouroff had a horror of unmarried women, and never had
been known to pay any sort of attention to one, not even to his
sister’s guest, Fuschia Leach the irresistible.

Prince Zouroff was a tall large man of seven and thirty j loosely
built, and plain of feature. He had all the vices, and had them all
in excess, but he was a very polished gentleman when he chose ;
and he was one of the richest men in Europe, and his family, of

34

MOTHS.

which he was the head, was very near the throne, in rank and
influence ; for twenty years, ever since he had left the imperial
Corps de Pages, and shown himself in Paris, driving his team
of black Orloffs, he had been the idolatry, the aspiration, and the
despair of all the mothers of maidens.

Vere’s passage through his drawing-rooms on his arm was a
spectacle so astonishing, that there was a general lull for a moment
in the conversation of all his guests. It was a triumph, but Vere
was wholly unconscious of it; which made her charming in the
eyes of the giver of it.

“I think that’s a case!” said Miss Fuschia Leach to her
admirers. She did not care herself. She did not want Zouroff,
high, and mighty, and rich, and of great fashion though he was ;
she meant to die an English duchess, and she had only thrown over
the unhappy Mull because she had found out he was poor. “ And
what’s the use of being a duchess, if you don't make a splash ? ”
she said very sensibly to his mother, when they talked it over.
She had flirted with Mull shamelessly, but so she did with scores of
them ; it was her way. She had brought the way from America.
She had young men about her as naturally as a rat-catcher has
ferrets and terriers ; but she meant to take her time before choosing
one of them for good and all.

What a bcautjful child she is,” thought Prince Zouroff,
“and so indifferent! Can she possibly be naughty Dolly’s
daughter ? ”

Ho was interested, and he, being skilled in such ways, easily
learned the little there was to know about her, whilst ho took her
through his conservatories, and showed her Japan lilies, Chinese
blossoms that changed colour thrice a day, and orchids of all
climes and colours.

The conservatories were really rare, and pleased her; hut
Prince Zouroff did not. His eyes were bold and cold, at once;
they were red too, and there was an odour of brandy on his breath
that came to her through all the scent of the flowers. She did not
like him. She was grave and silent. She answered what he
asked, but she did not care to stay there, and looked rouni for a
chance of escape. It charmed Zouroff, who was so used to see
women throw themselves in his path that he found no pleasure in
their pursuit.

“ Decidedly she has been, not at all with naughty Dolly ! ” he
said to himself, and looked at her with so much* undisguised
admiration in his gaze, that Vere, looking up from the golden
blossoms of an Odontogloasum, blushed to the eyes, and felt angry,
she could not very well have told why.

“Your flowers are magnificent, and I thank you, monsieur;
but I am tired, and I will say good night,” she said quickly, with a
little haughtiness of accent and glance which pleased Zouroff more
than anything had done for years.

MOTHS.

C5

“I would not detain you unwillingly, mademoiselle, one
moment,” he iShid, with a low bow — a bow which had some real
respect in it. Pardon me, this is your nearest way. I will say
to miladi that you were tired. To-morrow, if there be anything
you wish, only tell me, it shall be yours.”

He opened a door that led out of the last conservatory on to
the foot of the great staircase; and Vore, not knowing whether
she were not breaking all the rules of politeness and etiquette,
bent her head to him and darted like a swallow up the stairs.

Sergius Zouroff smiled, and strolled back alone through his
drawing-rooms, and went up to Lady Dolly, and cast himself into
a long, low chair by her side.

“ Ma c/iere, your lovely daughter did not appreciate mjr flowers
or myself. She told mo to tell you she was tired, and has*gone to
her room. She is beautiful, very beautiful ; but 1 cannot say that
she is complimentary.”

“She is only a child,” said Lady^Dolly hurriedly; she was
half relieved, half frightened. “ She is rude ! ” she added regret-
fully. It is the way she has been brought up. You must forgive
her, she is so young.”

“ Forgive her I Mais de Ion coeur 1 Anything feminine that
runs away is only too delightful in these times,” said the Prince
coolly. “ Do not change her. Do not tease, her. Do not try to
make licr like yd’ursclf. 1 prefer her as she is.”

Lady Dolly looked at him quickly. Was it possible that
already ?

Sergius Zouroff was lying back in his chair with his eyes closed.
He was laughing a little silently, in an unpleasant way that ho
had; he had sx)oken insolently, and Lady Dolly could not resent
his insolence.

“ You are very kind, Prince,” she said as negligently as she
could behind her fan. “ Very kind, to treat a child’s houtades as
a girl’s charm. She has really seen nothing, you know, shut up
in that old northern house by the sea ; and she is as eccentric as
if she were eighty years old. Quite odd in her notions, quite I ”

“ Shall we play ? ” said Zouroft*.

They began to jflay, most of them, at a little roulette table.
Musicians were interpreting, divinely, themes of Beethoven’s and
Schumann’s ; the great glass halls and marble courts of the flowers
were open with all their array of bloom ; the green gardens and
gay terraces were without in the brilliancy of moonlight ; the sea
was not a score of yards ayray, sparkling with phosphorus and
^!tar-rays ; but they were indifferent to all these things. They
began to play, and heeded nothing else. The music sounded on
deaf ears ; the flowers breathed out odours on closed nostrils, ; the
summer night spread its loveliness in vain; and the waters of
salt wave and fresh fountain murmured on unheeded. Play held
them.

66

MOTIia.

Sergius Zouroff lost plenty of money to Lady Dolly, who went
to bed at two o’clock, worried and yet pleased, anxious and yet
exultant.

Vere’s room was placed next to hors.

She looked in before passing on to her own. The girl lay
sound asleep in the sweet dreamless sleep of her lingering childhood,
her hair scattered like gold on the pillows, her limbs in the lovely
grace of a serene and unconscious repose.

Lady Dolly looked at her as she slept, and an uneasy pang
shot through her.

‘Mf ho do mean that,” sho thought, “I suppose it would bo
horrible. And how much too pretty and too innocent she would
be for him — tho beast 1 ”

Then she turned away, and went to her own chamber, and
began the toilsome martyrdom of having her ^Grruque unfastened,
and her night^s preparations for the morning’s enamel begun.

To women like Lady Dolly life is a comedy, no doubt, idaycd
on great stages and to brilliant audiences, and very amusing and
charming, and all that ; hut alas 1 it has two dread passages in
each short twenty-four hours ; they are, tho boro of being done
up,” and tbe boro of being “ undone ! ”

It is a martyrdom, but they bear it heroically, knowing lliat
without it they would ho nowhere; would hq yellow, pallid,
wrinkled, even perhaps would bo flirtationlcss, unenvied, unre-
garded, worse than dead !

If Lady Dolly had said any prayers she would have said,
I'hank God for Piver I ”

CHAPTER VIL

It was a very pretty life at Felicite.

The riding parties meeting under the old avenue of Spanish
chestnuts and dispersing down the flowering lanes ; the shooting
parties, which were not serious and engrossing as in England, but
animated and picturesque in the deep old Norman woods ; the
stately dinner at nine o’clock every night, like a royal banquet ;
tho music which was so worthy of more attentive hearers than it
ever got ; the theatre, pretty and pimpant as a coquette of the
last century ; the laughter ; the brilliancy ; the personal beauty of
the women assembled there ; all made the life at Felicite charming
to the eye and tho car. Yet amidst it all Vere felt very lonely,
and the only friends she made were in tho Irish horse that they
gave her to ride, and in the big Russian hound that belonged to
Prince Zouroff.

The men Ihonght her lovely, hut they could not get on with

MOTUB. 67

her ; the women disliked her as as they adored, or professed

to adore, Fusihia Leach.

To Vere, who at Bulmer had been accustomed to see life held
a serious, and even solemn thing — who had been accustomed to
the gravity of age and the melancholy of a seafaring poor, and
thc^^northern tillers of a thankless soil — nothing seemed so wonder-
ful as the perpetual gaiety and levity around her. Was there any
sorrow in the world? Was life only one long laugh? Was it
right to forget the woes of others as utterly as they were for-
gotten here ? She was always wondering, and there was no one
to ask.

“ You are horribly in earnest, Vere,” said her mother pettishly.
** You should go and live with Mr. Gladstone.”

But to Vere it seemed more horrible to bo always laughing —
and laughing at nothing. “When there are all the poor,” she
thought, “and all the animals that suffer so.” She did not under-
stand that, when these pretty women had sold china and flowers
at a fancy fair for a hospital, or sftbscribod to the Society for
Prevention of Cruelty, they had really done all that they thought
was required of them, and could dismiss all human and animal pain
from their minds, and bring their riding-horses home saddle-galled
and spur-torn without any compunction.

To the comploto innocence and honesty of the girPs nature the
diKScovery of wnat store the world set on all* things which she had
been taught to hold sacred, left a sickening sense of solitude and
depression behind it. Those who are little children now will have
little left to learn when they reach womanhood. The little children
that are about us at afternoon tea and at lawn tennis, that are
petted by house-parties and romped with at pigeon-shooting, will
have little left to discover. They are miniature women already ;
they know the meaning of many a dubious phrase; they know
the relative value of social positions ; they know much of the
science of flirtation which society has substituted for passioTi ; they
understand very thoroughly the shades of intimacy, the suggestions
of a smile, the degrees of hot and cold, that may bo marked by a
how or emphasised with a good-day. All the subtle science of
society is learned by thorn instinctively and unconsciously, as they
learn French and German from their maids. When they are
women they will at least never have Eve’s excuse for sin; they
will know everything that any tempter could tell them. Perhaps
their knowledge may prove their safeguard, perhaps not ; perhaps
without its bloom the fruit, to men’s taste 'may seem prematurely
withered. Another ten years will tell. At any rate those we pet
to-day will ho spared the pang of disillusion when they shall bo
fairly out in a world that they already know with cynical thorough-
ness — baby La Bruyeres and girl-Eochofoucaulds in frills and sashes.

To Vere Herbert, on the contrary, reared as she had been upon
grave studies and in country loneliness, the shocks her faiths and

08 MOTHS.

licr fancies received was very cruel. Sumetimbs slio thought
bitterly she would Lave minded nothing if only Lr** mother had
been a thing she could have reverenced, a creature she cduld have
gone to for support and sympathy.

But her mother was the most frivolous of the whole sea of froth
around her — of the whole frivolous womanhood about her the very
emptiest bubble.

A^ere, who herself had been cast by nature in the mould to bo
a noble mother of children, had antique sacred fancies that went
with the name of mother. The mother of the Gracchi, the mother
of Bonaparte, the mother of Garibaldi, the many noble maternal
figures of history and romance, were for ever in her thoughts ; the
time-honoured word embodied to her all sacrifice, all nobility, all
holiness.. And her mother was this pretty foolish painted toy, with
false curls in a sunny circlet, above her kohl-washed eyes, with her
lieart set on a cotillon, and her name in the mouths of the clubs ;
whose god was her tailor, and whose gospel was Zola ; whose life
was an opera-bouffe, and who when she costumed for her part in it,
took “ /e moindre excuse pour paraitre nueV^ The thought of her
mother, thus, hurt her, as in revolutions it hurts those who believe
in Mary to see a Madonna spat upon by a mob.

Lady Stoat saw this, and tried, in her fashion, to console her
for it.

My dear, your m6thcr is young still. She must divert herself.
It would be very hard on her not to be allowed. You must not
think she is not fond of you because she still likes to waltz.”

Vere’s eyes were very sombre as she heard.

“ I do not like to waltz. I never do.”

“No, love? Well, temperaments differ. But surely you
wouldn’t be so cruel as to condemn your mother only to have your
inclinations, would you ? Dolly was always full of fun. I think
you have not fun enough in you, perhaps.”

“ But my father is dead.”

“ My dear. Queen Anne is dead 1 Henri Quatre est sur le
Font-Nevf, What other news will you tell us ? I am not saying,
dear, that you should think less of your father’s memory. It is
too sweet of you to feel so much, and very, very rare, alas! for
nowadays our children are so forgetful, and wc are so little to them.
But still you know your mamma is young, and so pretty as she is,
too, no one can expect her to shut herself up as a recluse. Perha])s,
liad you been always with her, things would have been different,
but she has always been so much admired and so petted by every
one that it was only natural — only natural that ”

“ She should not want me,” said Vere, as Lady Stoat paused for
a word that should adequately express Lady Dolly’s excuses whilst
preserving Lady Dolly’s dignity before her daughter.

“ Oh, my dear, L never meant that,” she said hastily, 'whilst
thinking, “ Qud enfant terrible ! ”

MOTHB.

69

The brilliattfc Fuschia was inclined to be very amiable and
cordial to the young daughter of Lady Dorothy Vanderdccken, but
Vere repelled *her overtures with a chilling courtesy that made the
bright American “ feel foolish.”

But Pick-me-up, as she was usually called in the great world,
was not a person to be deterred by one slight, or by fifty. To
never risk a rebuff is a golden rule for self-respect ; but it is not
the rule by which new people achieve success.

Fuschia Leach was delighted with her social success, but she
never deceived herself about it.

In America her people were “ new people ” — ^that is to say, her
father had made his pile selling cigars and drugs in a wild country,
and her brothers were making a bigger pile killing pigs on a
gigantic scale down west. In New York she and hers were deemed
“ shoddy ” — the very shoddiest of shoddy — and were looked coldly
on, and were left un visited. But boldly springing over to less
sensitive Europe, they found themselves without effort received at
courts and in embassies, and had became fashionable people almost
as soon as they had had time to buy high-stepping horses and ask
great tailors to clothe them. It seemed very funny; it seemed
quite unaccountable, and it bewildered them a little ; but Fuschia
Leach did not lose her head.

“ I surmise I^d best eat the curds while they^ro sweet,” she said
to herself, anej she did eat them. She dressed, she danced, she
made all her young men fetch and carry for her, she flirted, she
caught up the ways and words and habits and graces of the great
world, and adapted herself to her new sphere with versatile clever-
ness, but all the same she prospected ” with a keen eye all the
land that lay around her, and never deceived herself.

*‘I look cunning, and Fm spry, and I cheek him, and say
outrageous things, and he likes it, and so they all go mad on mo
after him,” she said to herself; meaning by her pronoun the great
personage who had first made W the fashion. But she knew very
well that whenever anything prettier, odder, or more “ outrageous ”
than herself should appear she would lose her prestige in a day,
and fall back into the ranks of the ten thousand American girls
who overrun Europe.

“ I like you,” she said to Vere unasked one day, when she found
her alone on the lawn.

“You are very good,” said Vere, with the coldness of an empress
of sixty years old.

“ 1 like you,” reiterated Miss Leach. “I like you because you
treat ’em like dirt under your feet. That’s our way; but these
Europeans go after men as the squir’ls jump after cobs. You are
the only one I have seen that don’t.”

“You are very amiable to praise me,” said Vere coldly.

The lovely Fuschia continued her reflections aloud.

“ We’re just as bad when the Englishmen go over to us; that’s

70 MOTES.

a fact. But with our own mea we ain't ; we just make shoeblacks
and scallyrags of them; they fetch and ctoy, and do as they’re
told. What a sharp woman your mother is, and lis lively as a
katydid ! Now on our side, you know, the old folks never get at
play like that ; they've given over.”

“ My mother is young,” said Vere, more coldly still.

Miss Leach tilted her chair on end.

“ That's just what’s so queer. They are young on into any age
over here. lour mother's over thirty, I suppose ? Don't you call
that old? It’s Methuselah with us. But here your grandmothers
look as cunning as can be, and they’re as skittish as S 2 )ring-lambs ;
it’s the climate, I surmise ? *'

Vere did not reply, and Miss Fuschia Leach, undaunted, con-
tinued her meditations aloud.

“ You haven’t had many affairs, I think ? You're not really out,
are you?”

“No— affairs?”

“ Heart affairs, you know. Dear me 1 why before 1 was your
age, I was engaged to James '^’luke Dyson, down Boston way.”

“ Are you to marry him, then? ”

“Me? No— thanks I I never meant to marry him. He did
to go about with, and it made Victoria Boker right mad. Then
mother came to Europe : he and I vowed constancy and exchanged
rings and hair and all that, and we did write to (}ach other each
mail, till I got to Paris ; then I got more slack, and I disremern-
bered to ask when the mails went out ; soon after wc heard he had
burst up ; wasn't it a piece of luck ? ”

“ I do not understand.”

. “ Piece of luck we came to Europe. I might have taken him
over there. He was a fine young man, only he hadn’t the way
your men have ; not their cheek either. His father’d always been
thought one of the biggest note-shavers in N’York City, They say
it was the fall in silver broke him ; any way, poor James he’s a
clerk in a tea-store now.’’

Vere looked at her in speechless surprise ; Pick-me-up laughed
all the more.

“ Oh, they are always at seesaw like that in our country. He’ll
make another pile, I dare say, by next year, and they’ll all get on
their legs again. Your people, when they are bowled over lie
down ; ours jump up ; I surmise it's the climate. I like your men
best, though ; they look such swells, even when they're in blanket
coats and battered old hats, such as your cousin MuU wears.”

“Is it true that Frank wished to succeed Mr. James Fluke
Dyson? '' Vere asked after a sore struggle with her disgust.

“Who’s Frank?”

“ My cousin, Mull.”

“Is ho Frank? Dear life! I always thought dukes were
dukes, even in the bosom of their families. Yes ; he was that soft

MOTES.

71

on me — there, they all are, but he’s^the wurtit I ever saw. I said
no, but 1 could* whistle him back. I’m most sorry 1 did say no.
Dukes don’t ^row on every apple-bough ; only he’s poor, they
say ”

“Ho is poor,” said Vero coldly, her disgust conquering all
amusement,

“ When I came across the Pond,” said Miss Leach, continuing
her own reflections, “I said to mother ‘I’ll take nothing but a
duke.’ I always had a kind o’ fancy for a duke. There’s such
a few of them. I saw an old print once in the Broadway, of a
Duchess of Northumberland, holding her coronet out in both hands.
I said to myself then, that was how I’d be taken someday ”

“ Do you think duchesses hold their coronets in their hands,
then?”

“Well, no; I see they don’t; but I suppose one would in a
picture ? ”

“ I think it would look very odd, even in a picture.”

“What’s the use of having one, then? There aren’t corona-
tions every day. lliey tell mo your \)ousin might be rolling if he
liked. Is it true he’d have five hundred pounds sterling a day if
he bored for coal ? One could live on that.”

“ He would never permit the forest to be touched to save his
life I” said Vere indignantly, with a frown and a flush. “The
forests are as old as the days of Ilengist and Jlorsa ; the wild hulls
arc in them anfl the red deer ; men crept there to die after Ottor-
bouruo ; under one of the oaks, King James saw Johnio Arm-
strang.”

Fuschia Leach showed all her pretty teeth. “ Very touchin*,
but the coal was under them before that, I guess ! That’s much
more to the point. I come from a business-country. If he’ll hear
reason about that coal, I’m not sure I won’t think twice about your
cousin.’^

Vere, without ceremony, turned away. She felt angr^tears
swell her throat and rise into her eyes, • •

“ Oh, you turn up your nose ! ” said Fuschia Leach viva^iisly.
“You think it atrocious that new folks should carry olT your
brothers, and cousins, and friends. Well, I’d like to know where’s
it worse than all your big nobility going down at our feet for our
dollars ? I don’t say your English do it so much, but thi‘y do do
it, your younger sons, and all that small fry ; and abroad we can
buy the biggest and best titles in all Europe for a few hu^ndred
thousand dollars a year. That^s real mean 1 ThaVs blacking boots,
if you please. Men with a whole row of crusaders at their hacks,
men as count their forefathers right away into Julius Cajsar’s times,
men that had uncles in the Ark with Noah, they’re at a Yaukeo
pile like flies around molasses. Wal, now,” said the pretty Ameri-
can, with her eyes lighting fiercely and with sparks of scorn flash-
ing out from them, “ Wal, now, you’re all of you that proud that

72

MOTES.

you beat Lucifer, but as far as I see there aren’t much to he proud of.
We’re shoddy over there. IP we went to Boston 'we wouldn’t get
a drink, outside an hotel, for our lives. I^’York/i neither, don’t
think becaus^e a man’s struck ile he’ll go to heaven with Paris
thrown in ; but look at all your big folk I Pray what do thy do the
minute shoddy comes their way over the pickle-field ? Why they
just eat it I Kiss it and eat it I Do you guess we’re such fools wo
don’t see that? Why your Norman blood and Domesday Book
and all the rest of it — pray hasn’t it married Lily Peart, whose
father kept the steamboat hotel in Jersey City, and made his pile
selling soothers to the heathen Chinee? Who was your Mar-
chioness of Snowdon if she weren’t the daughter of old Sam Salmon
the note-shaver? Who was your Duchesse de Dagobert, if she
weren’t Aurelia Twine, with seventy million dollars made in two
years out of oil? W^ho was your Princess Buondelmare, if not
Lotty Miller, who was born in Nevada, and baptized with gin in a
miner’s pannikin ? We know ’em all 1 And Blue Blood’s taken
’em because they had cash. That’s about it I Wal, to my fancy,
there aren’t much to bo prouA of anyhow, and it aren’t only us that
need be laughed at.”

** It is not,” said Vere, who had listened in bewilderment.
“ There is very much to be ashamed of on both skit s.”

Shame’s a big thing — a four-horse concern,” said the other
with some demur. “ But if any child need be ashamed it is not
this child. There’s a' woman in Rome, Anastasia' W. Crash ; her
father’s a coloured person. After the war he turned note-shaver
and made a pile ; Anastasia aren’t coloured to signify ; she looks
like a Creole, and she’s handsome. It got wind in Romo that she
was going there, and had six million dollars a year safe ; and she
has that; it’s no lie. Well, in a week she could pick and choose
amongst the Roman princes as if they were bilberries in a hedge,
and she’s taken one that’s got a name a thousand years old ; a
name that every school-girl reads out in her history-books when
she reads about the popps ! There I And Anastasia W. Crash is
a coloured person with us ; with us we w^ould not go in the same
car with her, nor eat at the same table with her. What do you
think of that ? ”

“I think your country is very liberal ; and that your ‘coloured
person ’ has revenged all the crimes of the Borgias.”

The pretty American looked at her suspiciously.

“ I guess I don’t understand you,” she said a little sulkily. “ I
guess you’re very deep, aren’t you ? ”

“ Pardon me,” said Vere, weary of the conversation ; “ if you

will excuse me I will leave you now, wo are going to ride ”

^ “ Ride ? Ah 1 That’s a thing I don’t cotton to anyhow,” said
Miss Puschia Leach, who had found that her talent did not lie that
way, and could never bring herself to comprehend how princesses
and duchesses could find any jdeasurc in tearing over bleak fields

Moma.

73

and jumping scratching hedges, calonfhre at eighty degrees
always, a sacqiie from Sirandin’s, an easy chair, and a dozen young
men in varioijffe stages of admiration around her, that was her idea
of comfort. Everything .out of doors made her chilly.

She watched Vere pass away, and laughed, and yet felt sorry.
She herself was the rage because she was a great beauty and a
great flirt ; because she had been signalled for honour by a prince
whose word was law ; because she was made for the ago she lived in,
with a vulgarity that was chic, and an audacity that was unrivalled,
and a delightful mingling of utter ignorance and intense shrewd-
ness, of slavish submission to fashion and daring eccentricity in
expression, that made her to the jaded palate of the world a social
caviare, a moral absinthe. Exquisitely pretty, perfectly dressed,
as dainty to look at as porcelain, and as common to talk to as a
camp follower, she, like many of her nation, had found herself, to
her own surprise, an object of adoration to that great world of
which she had known nothing, except from the imaginative columns
of “ own correspondents." But Fuschia Leach was no fool, as she
said often herself, and she felt, asherhyes followed Vere, that this
calm cold child, with her great contemptuous eyes and her tranquil
voice, had something she had not ; something that not all the art
of Mr. Worth could send with his confections to herself.

“ My word ! I think I’ll take Mull just to rile her ! " she thought
to herself ; and thought, too, for she was good-natured and less vain
than she lookdd: “Perhaps she’d like me a little bit then — and
then, again, perhaps she wouldn’t.”

'' That girl’s worth five hundred of me, and yet they don’t see
It ! ” she mused now, as she pursued Vere’s shadow with her eyes
across the lawn. She know very well that with some combination
of scarlet and orange, or sage and maize upon her, in some miracle
of velvet and silk, with a cigarette in her mouth, a thousand little
curls on her forehead, the last slang on her lips, and the last news
on her ear, her own generation would find her adorable while it
would leave Vere Herbert in the shade. And yet she would sooner
have been Vere Herbert; yet she would sooner have had that
subtle, nameless, unattainable “ something ” which no combination
of scarlet and orange, of saso and of maize, was able to give, no
imitation or effort for half a lifetime would teach.

“We don’t raise that sort somehow our way,” she reflected
wistfully.

She let the riding party go out with a sigh of envy — the slender
figure of Vere foremost on a maro that few cared to mount — and
went herself to drive in a-little basket-carriage with the Princess
Nclaguine, accompanied by an escort of her own more intimate
adders, to call at two or three of the maisonettes scattered along
the line of the shore between Fdlicite and Villers.

“ Strikes mo I’ll have to take that duke after all,” she thought to
herself; he would come to her sign, she knew, as a hawk to the luro

74

MOTES.

That day Prince Zouroff i^do by Vere’s side, ai)d paid her many
compliments on her riding and other things ; but she scarcely
heal'd them. She knew^she could ride anything, a# she told him ;
and she thought every one could who loved horses ; and then she
barely heard the rest of his pretty speeches. She was thinking,
with a bewildered disgust, of the woman whom Francis Herbert,
Duke of Mull and Cantire, was willing to make her cousin.

She had not comprehended one tithe of Pick-me-up's jargon,
but she had understood the menace to the grand, old, sombre border
forests about Castle Herbert, which she loved with a love only second
to that she felt for the moors and woods of Bulmer.

“I would sooner see Francis dead than see him touch those
trees ! ” she thought, with what her mother called her terrible
earnestness. And she was so absorbed in thinking of the shame
of such a wife for a Herbert of Mull, that she never noticed the
glances Zouroff gave her, or dreamed that the ladies who rode witli
her were saying to each other, “ Is it possible ? Can he be
serious ? ”

Vere had been accustomed to rise at six and go to bed at ten, to
spend her time in serious studios or open-air exercise. She was be-
wildered by a day which began at one or two o'clock in the afternoon,
and ended at cockcrow or later. She was harassed by the sense
of*being perpetually exhibited and unceasingly criticised. Speak-
ing little herself, she Ibatened, and observed, and began to understand
all that Corrdze had vaguely warned her against ; to see the rancour
underlying the honeyed words ; the enmity concealed by the cordial
smile ; the hate expressed in praise ; the effort masked in ease ; the
endless strife and calumny, and cruelty, and small conspiracies
which make up the daily life of men and women in society. Most
of it was still a mystery to her ; but much .she saw, and grew
heartsick at it. Light and vain temperaments find their congenial
atmosphere in the world of fashion, but hers was neitlier light iku*
vain, and the falseness of it all oppressed her.

“You are a little Puritan, my dear! ” said Lady Stoat, smiling
at her.

'‘Pray be anything else rather that that!” said Lady Dolly
pettishly. “ Everybody hates it. It makes you look priggish and
conceited, and nobody believes in it even. That over a child of
mine should have such ideas ! ” .

“ Yes. It is very funny I ” said her dear Adino quietly. “ You
neglected her education, pussy. She is certainly a little Puritan.
But we should not laugh at her. In these days it is really very
interesting to see a girl who can blush, and who does not i^nderstand
the French of the Petits Journaux, though she knows the French of
hlarmontel and of Massillon,”

“ Who cares for Marmontel and Massillon ? ” said Lady Dolly in
disgust.

She was flattered by the success of Vere as a beauty, and irri-

MOTHS.

75

tated by her &.ilure as a companionable creature. She was
triumphant to see the impression made by the girl's blending of
sculptural callh and childlike loveliness. She was infuriated a
hundred times a day by Vere’s obduracy, coldness, and unwise
directness of speech.

“It is almost imbecility,** thought Lady Dolly, obliged to
apologise continually for some luisplaced sincerity or obtuse neg-
ligence with which her daughter had oflended people.

“ You should never froimr other people ; never, never 1 *’ said
Lady Dolly. “ If Nero, and what-was-her-name that began with
an M, were to come in your world, you should be civil to them ; you
should bo charming to them, so long as they w^ere people that were
received. Nobody is to judge for themselves, never. If society is
with you, then you are all right. Besides, it looks so much prettier
to be nice and charitable and all that ; and besides, whal do you
know, you chit ? ”

Vere was always silent under these instructions ; they were but
little understood by her. When sb^ did froisser people it was
generally because their consciences gave a sting to her simple frank
words of which the young speaker herself was quite unconscious.

“Am I a Puritan?” Vere thought, with anxious self-examin-
ation. In history she detested the Puritans ; all her sympathies
were with the other side. Yet she began now to think that, if the
Htuart court evgr resembled F^licitd, the Puritans had not perhaps
been so very far wrong.

Felicite was nothing more or worse than a very fashionable
liouse of the period ; but it was the world in little, and it hurt her,
bewildered her, and in many ways disgusted her.

If she had been stupid, as her motJier thought her, she would
have been amused or indifferent; but she was not stupid, and she
was oppressed and saddened. At Bulmer she had been reared to
think truth the first law of life, modesty as natural to a gentle-
woman as cleanliness, delicacy and reserve^tbo attributes of all good
breeding, and sincerity indispensable to self-respect. At F61icit6,
who seemed to care for any one of these things ?

Lady Stoat gave them lip-service indeed, but, with that excep-
tion, no one took the trouble even to render them that questionable
homage which hypocrisy joays to virtue.

In a world that was the really great world, so far as fashion
went and rank (for the house-party at Pclicitd was composed of
people of the purest blood and highest station^ people very ex-
clusive, very prominent and very illustrious), Vere found things
that seemed passing strange to her. Wlien she heard of pro-
fessional beauties, whose portraits were sold for a shilling, and
Avhose names were as cheap as red herrings, yet who were received
at court and envied by princesses ; when she saw that men were
the wooed, not the wooers, and that the art of flirtation was
reduced to a tournament of effrontery; when she saw a great

76

MOTES.

ducliesB g^out with the guns( carrying her own chokebore by Purdy
and showing her slender limbs in gaiters ; when she saw married
women not much older than herself spending houV after hour in
the fever of chemin-de-fer ; when she learned that they were very
greedy for their winnings to bo paid, but never dreamt of being
asked to pay their losses ; when she saw these women with babies
in their nurseries, making unblushing love to other women’s
husbands, and saw every one looking on the pastime as a matter
of course quite good-naturedly ; when she saw one of these ladies
take a flea from her person and cry, Qui m*aime Vavale, and a prince
of semi-royal blood swallow the flea in a glass of water, when to
these things, and a hundred others like them, the young student
from the Northumbrian moors was the silent and amazed listener
and spectator, she felt indeed lost in a strange and terrible world ;
and something that was very like disgust shone from her clear
eyes and closed her proud mouth.

Society as it was filled her with a very weariness of disgust,
a cold and dreary disenchantment, like the track of grey mire
that in the mountains is left by the descent of the glacier. But
her mother was more terrible to her than all. At the thought ot
her mother Vere, even in solitude, felt her cheek burn with an
intolerable shame. When she came to know something of the
meaning of those friendships that society condones— of those jests
which society whispers between a cup of tea and a cigarette — of
those hints which are enjoyed like a bonbon, yet contain all the
enormities that appalled Juvenal,*— then the heart of Vere grew
sick, and she began slowly to realise what manner of woman tliis
was that had given her birth.

“My dear, your pretty daughter seems to sit in judgment on us
all ! I am sadly afraid she finds us wanting,” said the great lady
who had signalised herself with utilising a flea.

“ Oh, she has a dreadful look, I know,” said Lady Dolly dis-
tractedly. “But you see she has been always with that odious
old woman. She has seen nothing. She is a baby.”

The other smiled.

“ When she has been married a year, all that will change. Slie
will leave it behind her with her maiden sashes and shoes. But I
am not sure that she will marry quickly, lovely as she is. Slic
frightens people, and, if you don’t mind my saying so, she is rude.
The other night when we h^d that little bit of fun about the flea
she rose and walked away, turned her back positively, as if she
were a scandalised dowager. Now, you know, that doesn’t do
nowadays. The age of saints is gone by ”

“ If there over were one,” said Lady Dolly, who occasionally
forgot that she was very high church in her doctrines.

“ Vera would make a beautiful St. Ursula,” said Lady Stoat,
joining them.' “There is war as well as patience in her counte-
nance ; she will resist actively as well as endure passively.”

MOTHS.

77

'' What a dreadful thing to say ! **’feighed Lady Dolly.

The heroin^of the flea erotic laughed at her,

** Marry her, my dear. That is what she wants.”

She herself was only ‘one and twenty, and had been married
four years, had some little flaxen bundles in nurses’ arms that she
seldom saw, was deeply in debt, bad as many adorers as she had
pearls and diamonds, and was a very popular and admired per-
sonage.

“ Why can’t you get on with people ?” Lady Dolly said to Vere
irritably, that day.

“ I do not think they like me,” said Vcre very humbly ; and
iier mother answered very sharply and sensibly —

“Everybody is liked as much as they wish to be. If you
show people you like them, they like you. It is perfectly simple.
You get what you give, my dear, in this world. But the sad
truth is, Vcre, that you are unamiable.”

Was she in truth unamiable?

She felt the tears gather in her eyes. She pat her hand on the
liound Loris’s collar, and went away with him into the gardens ;
the exquisite gardens with the gleam of the sea between the
festoons of their roses that no one hardly ever noticed except
herself. In a deserted spot where a marble Antinous reigned over
a world of bigonias, she sat down on a rustic chair and put her
arm round the dog’s neck, and cried like the dliild that she was.

She thought of the sweetbriar bush on the edge of the
white cliff— oh ! if only Coridze had been here to tell her what
to do !

The dog kissed her in his own way, and was sorrowful for her
sorrow; the sea wind stirred the flowers; the waves were near
enough at hand for their murmuring to reach her ; the quietness
and sweetness of the place soothed her.

She would surely see Corr^zo again, she thought; perhaps in
Paris, this very winter, if her mother took her there. He would
tell her if she were right or wrong in having no sympathy with
all these people ; and the tears still fell down her cheeks as she sat
there and fancied she heard that wondrous voice rise once more
above the sound of the sea.

“Mademoiselle Vera, are you unhappy? and in P41icit4l” said
a voice that was very unlike that unforgotten music — the voice of
Sergius Zouroff.

Vere looked up startled, with her tears still wet, like dew.

Zouroff had been kindness itself to »hcr, but her first disgust
lor him had never changed. She was alarmed and vexed to bo
found by him, so, alone.

“ What frets you ? ” he said, with moro. gentleness than often
came into his tones. “ It is a regret to me as your host that you
should know any regret in Fdlicitc, If there be anything I can
do,. command me.”

73 MOTHS.

**You are very good, mdnsieur,” said Vcre Kcsitatingly.

Ls nothing — very little, at least; my mother is vexoti with me. ^

“ Indeed I Your charming mother, then, for once, must be in
the wrong. What is it ? ”

“ Because people do not like me.”

“ Who is barbarian enough not to like you ? I am a barbarian,
but **

His cold eyes grew eloquent, but she did not see their gaze, for
she was looking dreamily at the far-off sea.

** No one likes me,” said Vere wearily, and my mother thinks
it is my fault. No doubt it is. I do not care for what they care
for ; but then tliey do not care for what I love — the gardens, the
woods, the sea, the dogs.”

She drew Loris close as she spoke, and rose to go. She did not
wish to be with her host. But Zouroff paced by her side.

“ Loris pleases you? Will you give him the happiness of being
called yonvs ? ”

Vcre for once raised a bright and grateful face to him, a Rush
of pleasure drying her tears.

“Mine? Loris? Oh, that would be delightful! — if mamma
will let me.”

“ Your mother will let you,” said Zouroff, with an odd smilor
“ Loris is a fortunate beast, to have power to win your hincy.”

But I like all dogs ” *

And no men ? ”

I do not think about them.”

It was the simple truth.

“ I wish I were a dog 1 ” said Serge Zouroff.

Vcre laughed for a moment — a child’s sudden laugh at a droll
idea ; then her brows contracted a little.

“ Dogs do not flatter me,” she said curtly.

Nor do I— /oi d'honneur ! But tell me, is it really the fact
that cruel Lady Dolly made you weep? In my house too I — I am
very angry. I wi.sh to ^make it Felicite to you, beyond any other
of my guests.”

‘‘JMamma was no doubt right, monsieur,” said Vcrc coldly.

She said that I do not like people, and I do not.”

“ Dame ! you have very excellent taste, then,” said Zouroff
with a laugh. *M will not quarrel with your coldness, Made-
moiselle Vera, if you will only make an exception for me ? ”

Vere was silent.

ZourofTs eyes grew impatient and fiery,

** Will you not even like me a little for Loris^s sake? ”

Vere stood still in the rose-path, and looked at him with serious
serene eyes.

“ It was kind of you to give me Loris, that I know, and I am
grateful for that ; but I will not tell you what is false, monsieur ;
it would be a very bad return.”

Moim.

?9

'' Is she ilio wiliest coquette by instinct, or only the stiangest
child that evef breathed?” thought Zouroff as ho said aloud,
** Why do you not like me, mon enfant f ”

Yere hesitated a moment.

I do not think you are a good man.”

“ And why am 1 so unfortunate as to give you that opinion of
ino?”

“ It is the way you talk ; and you kicked Loris one day last
week.”

Serge Zouroff laughed aloud, but ho 'swore a heavy oath under
liis breath.

“ Your name in Russian means Faith. You are well named,
Tdadenioisello Vera,” he said carelessly, as ho continued to "walk by
her side. '' But I shall hope to make you think better things of
me yet, and I can never kick Loris again, as he is now yours, with-
out your permission.”

“ You will never have that,” said Verc, with a little sniih;, as
slic thought, with a X’aiig of compunction, that she had been very
rude to a hcjst who was courteous and generous.

Zouroff moved on beside her, gloomy and silent,

“ Take my arm, mademoiselle,” ho said suddenly, as they were
approaching the clifiteau. Ycro put her hand on his arm in timi<l
compliance ; sh(Lfelt that she must have seemed rude and thankless.
They crossed ilic smooth lawns that stretched underneath the
terraces of Fclicite.

It was near sunset, about seven o’clock; some ladies were out
on the terrace, amidst them Lady Dolly and the heroine of the
flea.. 'J hoy saw Zouroff cross the turf, with the girl in her white
Gainshorough dress heside him, and the hound beside her.

Lady Dolly’s heart gave a sudden leap, then stopped its beats in
suspense.

“ Positively — I do — think ” murmured the lady of the flea;

and then fell back in her chair in a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

Yere loosened her hand from her host’s arm as they ascended
the terrace stejis, and came straight to her mother.

“ Monsieur Zouroff has given me Loris ! ” she cried breathlessly,
for the dog was to her an exceeding joy. “ You will lot me have
Loris, mamma ? ”

“ Let her have Loris,” said Zouroff, with a smile that Lady
Dolly understood.

“ Cci tainly, since you arc so kind, Prince,” she said charmingly.
“ But a dog I It is such a disagreeable thing; when one- travels
c>i!ccially. Still, since you arc so good to that naughty child, who
g'vcs all her heart to the brutes— ”

“ I am happy that she thinks mo a brute too,” said Zouroff,
with a grim smile.

The ladies laughed.

ATire did not Lear or heed. She was caressing her new treasure.

80 MOTHS.

“ I shall not feel alone now with Loris," she was saj iiig to
herself. The dull fierce eyes of Serge Zouroff wore^astened on her,
but she did not think of him, nor of why the women laughed.

Lady Dolly was vaguely perplexed.

“ The girl was crying half an hour ago,” she thought. “Perhaps
she is deeper than one thinks. Perhaps she means to draw him on
that way. Anyhow, her way appears to answer — but it hardly
seems possible — when one thinks what he has had thrown at his
head and never looked at! And Vere! such a rude creature, and
such a simpleton 1 ”

Yet a sullen respect began to enter into her for her daughter :
the respect that women of the world only give to a shrewd talent
for finesse. If she were capable at sixteen of “ drawing on ” the
master of Felicity thus ably, Lady Dolly felt that her daughter
might yet prove worthy of her ; might still become a being with
whom she could have sympathy and community of sentiment.
And yet Lady Dolly felt a sort of sickness steal over her as she saw
the look in his eyes which Ycre did not sec.

“ It will be horrible 1 horrible ! ” she said to herself. “ Why did
Adine ever tell me to come here?”

For Lady Dolly was never in her own eyes the victim of her
own follies, but always that of some one else’s bad counsels.

Lady Dolly was frightened when she thought that it was ])os-
siblo that this scurner of unmarried women would be won by her
own child. But she was yet more terrified when the probable hope-
lessness of any such project flashed on her.

The gift of the dog might mean everything, and might mean
nothing.

“ What a constant misery she is 1 ” she mused. “ Oli, why
wasn’t she a boy ? They go to Eton, and if they get into trouble
men manage it all ; and they are useful to go about with if you
want stalls at a theatre, or an escort that don’t comprumise you.
But a daughter ! . . .'

She could have cried, dressed though she was for dinner, in a
combination of orange and deadleaf, that Avould have consoled any
woman under any alllictiou.

“ Do you think he means it? ” she whispered to Lady Stoat, who
answered cautiously —

“ I thinlc ho might be made to mean it.”

Lady Dolly sighed, and looked nervous.

Two days later Loris bad a silver collar on his neck that Lad
just come from Paris. It had the inscription on it of the Trouba-
dour’s motto for his mistress’s fiilcon :

Quiconque me trouveray qyHil me meno a ma maitresse : qmir
recompense il la verm ”

Vere looked doubtfully at the collar ; she preferred Loris with-
• out it.

“He does mean it,” said Lady Dolly to herself; and her pulses
(luttcred strangely.

MOTHS.

81

I'd have gived you a dog if I'd k'AOwn you wished for one,”
said John Jura ^Jioodiljr that evening to Yero. She smiled and
thanked him.

“ I had so many dogs about mo at Bulmer I feel lost without
one, and Loris is very beautiful ”

Jura looked at her with close scrutiny.

“ How do you like the giver of Loris ? "

Yere met his gaze unmoved.

“I do not like him at all,” she said in a low tone. “But perhaps
it is not sincere to say so. He is very kind, and we are in his
house.”

My dear ! That wo are in his house or that he is in ours is
the very reason to abuse a man like a thief ! You don't seem to
understand modern ethics,” said the heroine of the flea epic, ^ as she
passed near with a little laugh, on her way to play cliemin-de-fer in
the next drawing-room.

“ Don't listen to them,” said Jura hastily. They will do you
no good ; they arc all a bad lot here.” ,

“ But they are all gentle-people?” said Yere in some astonish-
ment. “ 'Jliey are all gentlemen and gentlewomen born.”

“Oh, horn I*' said Jura, with immeasurable contempt. “Oh
yes ! they're all in the swim for that matter ; but they are about
as bad a set as there is in Europe ; not but what it is much the
same cverywhero* They say the Second Empire did it. I don't
know if it's that, but I do know that ‘gentlewomen,’ as you call it,
are things one mwer sees nowadays anywhere in Paris or London.
You liave got the old grace, but how long will you keep it ? They
will corrupt you ; and if they can’t, they’ll ruin you.”

“ Is it so easy to be corrupted or to be ruined ? ”

“ Easy as blacking your glove,” said Jura moodily.

Yere gave a little sigh. life seemed to her very difficult.

“ I do not think they will change mo,” she said, after a few
moments' thought,

“ I don't think they will ; but they will’ make you pay for it.
If they say nothing worse of you than that you are ‘ odd,' you will
l)e lucky. How did you become what you were? You, Dolly's
daughter 1 ”

Vero coloured at the unconscious contempt with which ho
spoke the two last words,

“ I try to he what my father would have wished,” she said
under her breath.

Jura was touched. His blue eyes grew dim and reverential.

^ “ I wish to heaven your father may watch over you ! ” he said

in a husky voice. “ In our world, my dear, you will want some
good angel — bitterly. Perhaps you will be your own, though. I
hope so.”

His hand sought hers and caught it closely for an instant, and
he grew very pale, Yere looked up in a little surprise.

a

82

MOTHS.

“ You are very kind think of me,” she stiid with a certain

emotion.

“ Who would not think of you? ” muttered Jura, with a dark-
ness on his frank, fair, bold face. " Don't be so astonislied that I
do,” he said, with a little laugh, whose irony she did not under-
stand. “ You know I am such a friend of your mother’s*”

“ Yes,” said Vere gravely.

She was perjdexcd. He took up her fan and unfurled it.

“ Who gave you this thing ? It is an old one of Dolly's, I
bought it in the Passage Choiseul myself; it’s not half good
enough for you now. I bought one at Christie's last winter, that
belonged to Maria Theresa ; it has her monogram in opals ; it was
painted by Fragonard, or one of those beggars ; I will send for it
for you if you will please me by taking it.”

“ You arc very kind,” said Vere.

“ That is what you say of Serge Zouroff I ”

She laughed a little.

“ 1 like you better than Monsieur Zouroff,”

Jura's face flushed to fbe roots of his fair crisp curls.

** And as well as your favoured singer? ”

Ah, no ! ” — Vere spoke quickly, and with a frown on her
pretty brows. She was annoyed at the mention of Corr^ze.

Lady Dolly approached at that moment — an apparition of white
lace and ne/iuphars^ with some wonderful old cameos as ornaments.

“ Take rue to the tea-room. Jack,” she said slTarjdy. ** Clemen-
tine de Vrillo is winning everything again; it is sickening; 1
believe she marks the aces I ”

Jura gave her his arm.

Vere, left alone, sat lost in thought. It was a strange world.
No one seemed happy in it, or sincere. Lord Jura, whom her
mother treated like a brother, seemed to despise her more than any
one; and her mother seemed to say that another friend, who was a
French duchess, descended from a Valois, was guilty of cheating at
cards I

Jura took the white lace and nenuphars into the tea-room, lie
was silent and preoccupied. Lady Dolly wanted pretty attentions,
but their day was over with him.

“ Is it true,” he said abruptly to her, “ that Zouroff wants your
daughter ? ”

Lady Dolly smiled vaguely.

“Oh I I don’t know; they say many things, you know. No;

I shouldn’t suppose he means anything, should you ? ”

“ I can't say,” he answered curtly. “ You wish it.”

“ Of course I wish anything for her happiness.”

He laughed aloud.

“ What damned hypocrites all you women are ! ”

“My dear Jura, pray I you are not in a guard-room or a club-
room 1 ” said Lady Dolly very seriously shocked indeed.

MOTm.

83

Lord Jura got her off his hands at length, and bestowed her on
a young dandy, jyho had become famous by winning the Grand
Prix in that summer. Then he walked away by himself into the
smoking-room, which at that hour was quite deserted. He threw
himself down on one of the couches^ and thought — moodily, im-
patiently, bitterly.

“ What cursed fools we are 1 " ho mused. What a fool he had
been ever to fancy that he loved the bloom of Fiver’s powders, the
slim shape of a white satin corset, the falsehoods of a dozen seasons,
the debts of a little gamester, the smiles of a calculating coquette,
and the five hundred things of like value, that made up the human
entity, known as Lady Dolly.

He could see her, as he had seen her first ; a little gossamer
figure under the old elms, down by the waterside at Huriingham,
when Huriingham had been in its earliest natal days of glory.
There had been a dinner-jparty for a Sunday evening; he re-
membered carrying her tea, and picking her out the big straw-
berries under the cedar. They had met ^ thousand times before
tliat, but had never spoken. He thought her the prettiest creature
he had ever seen. Hhe had told him to call on her at Chesham
I’lace; she was always at home at four. He remembered their
coining upon a dead pigeon amongst the gardenias, and how she
had laughed, and told him to write its elegy, and he had said that
he would if ho cowld only spell, but he had never been able to spell
in his life. All the nonsense, all the trilles, came back to his
memory in a hateful clearness. That was five years ago, and she
was as pretty as ever: Piver is the true fontaine dejouvence. She
was not changed, but he — he wished that he had been dead like
the blue-rock amongst the gardenias.

Ho thought of a serious sweet face, a noble mouth, a low broad
brow, with the fair hair lying thickly above it.

“ Good God ! ” ho thought, “ who would ever have dreamt that
s7ie could have had such a daughter ! ”

And his heart was sick, and his meditation was bitter. He
was of a loyal, faithful, dog-like temper ; yet in that moment he
turned in revolt against the captivity that had once seemed sweet,
and he hated the mother of Vcrc.

A little later Lord Jura told his host that he was very sorr 3 %
regretted infinitely, and all that, but he was obliged to go up to
Scotlnnd. Ills father had a great house-party there, and would
have no denial.

Alone, Lady Dolly said to him, ** What does this mean ? what
is this for? You know you never go to Camelot; you know that
you go to every other house in the kingdom sooner. What did
you say it for? And how dare you say it without seeing if it suit
mo? It doesn’t suit me.”

** I put it on Camelot because it sounds more decent ; and I
mean to go,” said Lord Jura, plunging his hands in his pockets.

MOTHS.

64

“ The truth is, Dolly, I don’t care to be in this -blackguard’s house.
He is a blackguard, and you’re wanting to get him.”

Lady Dolly turned pale and sick.

What language I How is he any more a — ^what you say —
than you are, or anybody else ? And pray for what do I want
him?”

The broad frank brows of Lord Jura grew stormy as he frowned.

“ The man is a blackguard. There are things one can’t say to
women. Everybody knows it. You don’t care ; you want to get
him for the child.”

‘'Vera? Good gracious I What is Vera to you if it be what
you fancy ? ”

“Nothing!” said Lord Jura, and his lips were pressed close
together, and he did not look at liis companion.

“ Then why— I should think she isn’t, indeed ! — but why, in the
name of goodness — — ”

“ Look here, Dolly,” said the young man sternly. “ Look here.
I’m death on sport, and I’ve killed most things, from stripes in the
jungle to the red rover in the furrows; I don’t affect to be a feeling
fellow, or to go in for that sort of sentiment, but there was one
thing I never could stand seeing, and that was a little innocent
wild rabbit caught in a gin-trap. My keepers dai-en’t set one fur
their lives. I can’t catch you by the throat, or throttle Zouroff as
I should a keeper if I caught him at it, so I go to Camelot. That’s
all. Don’t make a fuss. You’re going to do a wicked thing, if
you can do it, and I won’t look on ; that’s all.”

Lady Dolly was very frightened.

“What do you know about Zouroff?” she murmured hurriedly.

“ Only what all Paris knows ; that is quite enough.”

Lady Dolly was relieved, and instantly allowed herself to grow
angry.

“All Paris! Such stuff! As if men were not all alike.
Really one would ffincy you wore in love with Vera yourself! ”

“Stop that!” said Lord Jura sternly; and she was subdued,
and said no more. “ I shall go to-morrow,” ho added carelessly ;
“ and you may as well give mo a book or a note or something for
the women at Camelot ; it will stay their tongues here.”

“ I have a tapestry pattern to send to your sisters,” said Lady
Dolly, submissive but infuriated. “What do you know about
Sergius Zouroff, Jack ? I wish you would tell me.”

“I think you know jt all very well,” said Lord Jura. “I
think you women know all about all the vices under tlie sun, only
you don’t mind. There are always bookcases locked in every
library; I don’t know why we lock ’em; women know everything.
But if the man’s rich it don’t matter. If the fellows we used to
read about in Suetonius were alive now, you’d marry your girls to
them and never ask any questions— except about settlements.
It’d no use my saying anything ; you don’t care. But I tell you

MOTHS.

8S

all the same that if -you give your daughter when she’s scarce six-
teen to that brute, you might just as well strip her naked and set
her up to auction like the girl in La Coupe ou La Femme I **

“ You grow very coarse,” said Lady Dolly, coldly.

Lord Jura left the room, and, in the morning, left the house.

As the “Eidiemeris” went slowly, in a languid wind, across
the cliaiinel in the grey twilight, he sat on deck and smoked, and
grew heavy-hearted. He was not a book-learned man, and seldom
read anything beyond the sporting papers, or a French romance ;
but some old verse, about the Fates making out of our pleasant
vices whips to scourge us crossed liis mind, as the woods and towers
uf Felicite receded from his sight.

lie was young; he was his own master; he was Earl of Jura,
and would be Marquis of Shetland. He could have looked into
those grand grey eyes of Vero Herbert’s with a frank and Honest
love ; he could have been happy, only — only — only !

'I'ho Maria Theresa fan came from Camelot, but Jura never
returned.

That night there was a performance in the little theatre ; there
was usually one every other night. The actors enjoyed themselves
much more than the guests at Felicite. They all lived in a little
maisonnette in the park, idled through their days as tliey liked, and
])iayed when they were told. When his house party bored him
beyond endurancc,^SergiusZourofl‘ wandered away to that maiHonneiie
ill his park at midnight.

That evening the piece on the programme was one that was
very light, Zoiirofl' stooped his head to Lady Dolly as they were
about to move to the theatre.

“ Send your daughter to her bed ; that piece is not fit for her ears.”

Lady Dolly stared and hit her lip. But she obeyed. She went
hack and touched Vere’s cheek with her tan and caressed her.

My sweet one, you look jjale. Go to your room ; you do not
care much for acting, and your health is so precious ”

“ He must mean it,” she thought, as they went into the pretty
theatre, and the lights went round with her. The jests fell on deaf
cars so far as she was concerned ; the dazzling little scenes danced
before her sight ; she could only see the heavy form of Zouroff cast
down in his velvet chair, with his eyes half shut, and his thick
eyebrows drawn together in a frown that did not relax.

"He must mean it,” she thought. "But how odd! Good
heavens ! that he should care — that he should think — of what is
lit or unfit ! ”

And it made her laugh cdnvulsively, in a sort of spasni ot
mirth, for which the gestures and jokes of the scene gave excuse.

Yet she had never felt so nearly wretched, never so nearly
understood what shame and repentance meant.

In the entr^acte Zouroff changed his place, and took a vacant
chair by Lady Dolly, and took up her fan and played with it.

MOTHS.

** Miladi, we have ah\fkys been friends, goo’d friends, Lave we
not ? ” he said with the smile that she hated. “ know mo well,
and can judge me without flattery. What will you say if 1 tell you
that I seek the honour of your daughter’s hand ? ”

He folded and unfolded the fan as he spoke. The orchestra
played at that moment loudly. Lady Dolly was silent. 1’herc was
a contraction at the corners of her pretty rosebud-like rnouih.

“ Any mother could have but one answer to you,” she rejplied
with an cflbrt. “ You are too good, and I am too happy ! ”

“ 1 may speak to her, then, to-morrow, with your consent ? ” he
added.

“ Let me speak to her first,” she said hurriedly ; “ she is so
young.”

As you will, madame ! Place myself and all I have at her

feet.”

What can you have seen in her ! Good heavens ! ” she cried
in an impulse of amaze.

“IShe has avoided me!” said Sergo Zouroff, and spoke the
truth : then added in his best manner, “ And is she not your
child?”

The violins chirped softly as waking birds at dawn ; the satin
curtain drew up; the little glittering scene shone again in the
wax-light. Lady Dolly gasi)ed a little for breath.

“ Jt is very warhi here,” she murmured. “ Don’t you think if a
window were opened. And then you have astonished me so ”

She shook double her usual drops of chloral out into her glass
that night, but they did not give her sleep.

“ I shall never persuade her ! ” she thouglit ; gazing with dry,
hot eyes at the light swinging before her mirror. The eyes of Vero
seemed to look at her in their innocent, scornful serenity, and the
eyes of Vere’s father too.

“ Do the dead over come back ? ” she thought ; some peojile say
they do.”

And Lady Dolly, between her soft sheets, shivered, and felt
frightened and old.

She was on the edge of a crime, and she had a conscience,
though it was a very small and feeble one, and seldom spoke.

CHAPTER VIII.

Verb had been up with the sunrise, and out with Loris. She had
had the pretty green park and the dewy gardens to herself ; she
had filled her hands with more flowers than she could carry ; her
hair and her clothes were fragrant with the smell of mown grass
and pressed thyme; she stole back on tiptoe through the long

M0TII8. 87

corridors, thro\igli *the still house, for if was only nine o’clock, and
she knew that ali the guests of Felicitd were still sleeping.

I’o her surprise her mother’s door opened, and her mother’s
voice called lier.

Vcre went in, fresh and bright as was the summer morning
itself, with the dew upon he^ hair and the smell of the blossoms
entering with her, into the warm oppressive air that was laden
with the smells of anodynes and perfumes.

Her mother had already been made pretty for the day, and a
lovely turquoise- blue dressing-robe enveloped her. She opened her
arms, and folded the child in them, and touched her forehead with
a kiss.

“My darling, my sweet child,” she murmured, “I have some
wonderful news for you ; news that makes me very .happy,
Yera ”

“ Yes ? ” said Vcre, standing with wide-opened expectant eyes,
the flowers falling about her, the dew sparkling on her hair.

“ Yes, too happy, my Vera, since it secures your happiness,”
murmured her motlier. “ But perhaps you can guess, dear, though
you are so very young, and you do not even know what love
means. Vera, my sweetest, my old friend Prince Zourolf has
sought 3 mu from me in marriage I ”

“ Mother ! ” Vcre stepped backward, then stood still again ; a
speechless arnazff, an utter incredulity, an unhttorable disgust, all
speaking in her face.

“Arc you startled, darling said Lady Dolly, in her blandest
voice. “Of course you arc, you are such a child. But if you
lliink a moment, Vera, you will see the extreme compliment it is
to you; the greatness it offers you; the security that the devotion
of a ”

“Mother! ” she cried again ; and this time the word was a cry
of horror — a ])rotest of indignation and outrage,

“Don’t call me ‘mother’ like that. You know I hate it!”
said Lady Dolly, lapsing into the tone most natural to her.
“ ‘ Mother I mother! ’ as it I were beating you with the poker, like
the people in the police rei)orts. You are so silly, my dear; I
cannot think what he can have seen in you, but seen something ho
has, enough to make him wish to marry you. You are a baby, but
I suppose you can understand that. It is a very great and good
marriage, Vera; no one could desire anything better. You are
exceedingly young, indeed, according to English notions ; but they
never were my notions, and J think a girl cannot anyhow be safer
than properly married to a person desirable in every way ”

Lady Dolly paused a moment to take breath ; she felt a littid
excited, a little exhausted, and there was that in the colourless face
of her daughter which frightened her, as she had been frightened in
her bed, wondering if the dead came back on earth.

She made a little forward cej:essing movement, and would have

88

MOTHS.

kissed her again, hut Vero amoved away, her eyes were darkened
with anger, and her lips were tremulous. /v

“ Prince Zouroff is a coward,” said the girl, very low, hut very
bitterly. “ He knows that I loathe him, and that I think him a
bad man. How dare he — how dare he — insult me so !

“ Insult you ! ” echoed Lady Dolly, with almost a scream.

Are you mad ? Insult you ! A man that all Europe has b(^cn
wild to marry these fifteen years past! Insult you! A man who
oflers you an alliance that will send you out of a room before every-
body except actually princesses of the blood ? Insult you ! When
was ever an offer of marriage thought an insult in society ! ”

I think it can be the greatest one,” said Vere, still under her
her breath.

“ You think ! Who are you to think ? Pray have no thoughts
at all unless they are wiser than that. You are startled, my dear;
that is perhaps natural. You did not see he was in love with you,
though every one else did.”

“ Oh, do not say such horrible words ! ”

The blood rushed to the child’s face, and she covered her
with her hands. She was hurt, deeply, passionately — hurt and
humiliated, in a way that her mother could no more have under-
stood than she could have understood the paths travelled by the
invisible stars.

“ lloally you are too ridiculous,” she said impaitiently. “ Even
you, I should think, must know what love means. I believe even
at Ilulmer you read ‘Waverlcy.* You liave charmed Sergius
Zouroff, and it is a very great victory, and if all this sur})riso and
disgust at it is not a mere piece of acting, you must be absolutely
brainless, absolutely idiotic ! You cannot seriously moan that a
man insults you when he offers you a position that has been coveted
by half Europe.”

“ When he knows that I cannot endure him,” said Vere with
flashing eyes ; it is ai^ insult ; tell him so from me. Oh, mother !
mother ! that you could even call me to hoar such a thing. ... I
do not want to marry any one ; I do not wish ever to marry, I^et
me go back to Buimer. I am not made for the world, nor it
for me.”

“ You are not, indeed ! ” said her mother^ in exasperation and
disgust, feeling her own rage and anxiety like two strangling hands
at her throat, Nevertheless, into the world you will go as
Princess Zouroff. The alliance suits me, and I am not easily
dissuaded from what I wish. Your heroics count for nothing. All
girls of sixteen are gushing and silly. I was too. It is an immense
thing that you have such a stroke of good fortune. I quite de-
spaired of you. You are very lovely, but you are old-fashioned,
pedantic, unpleasant. You have no chic. You have no malle-
ability. You are handsome, and that is all. It is a wonderful
thing that you should have made such a coup as this before you

MOTBB.

arc even out. You are quite penniless ^ quite, did you understand
that? You haV|<? no claim on Mr. Vanderdccken, and I am not at
all sure that he will not make a great piece of w^ork when I leave
him to pay for your troufisedUy as I must do, for I can’t pay for it,
and none of the Herberts will; they are all poor and proud as
church mice, and though Zourofi* wull of course send you a corbeille,
all the rest must come from me, and must be perfect and abundant,
and from all the best houses.”

Yerc struck her foot on the floor. It was the first gesture of
passion that she had ever piven way to since her birth.

“dhat is enough, mother!” she said aloud and very firmly.
“Put it in what words you like to Prince Zourolf, but tell him
from me that I will not marry him. I will not. "J'hat is enough.”

Then, before her mother could speak again, slic gathered up the
dew-wet flowers in her hand and left the room.

Lady Dolly shrugged her shoulders, and swore a little naughty
oath, as if she had lost fifty pounds at bezique.

She was ])ale and excited, ofiended and very angry, but she was
not afraid. Girls were always like that, slic thought. Onl}^ for
the immediate moment it was dilhcult.

She sat and meditated awhile, then made up her mind. She
had nerved herself in the night that was just past to put her child
in the brazen hands of Moloch because it suited her, because it
served her, because she had let her little AVeak conscience sink
utterly, and dowm in the dcejis; and having once made up her
mind she was resolved to have her will. Like all w^eak pcoifle, she
could be cruel, and she was cruel now.

AYhen the midday chimes rang with music from the clock-
tower, Lady Dolly 'went out of her own room downstairs. It was
the habit at Felicity for tlie guests to meet at a one o’clock break-
fast — being in the country they thought it well to rise early. Serge
Zouvoff, as lie met her, smiled.

“ Eh lien ? ” he asked.

The smile made Lady Dolly feel sick and cold, but she looked
softly into his eyes.

“ Dear friend, do not ho in haste. My child is such a child —
she is flattered — deeply moved — but startled. She has no thought
of any such ideas, you know ; sh-e can scarcely understand. Leave
her to me for a day or two. Do not hurry her. This morning,
if you will lend me a pony carriage, I will drive over with her
to Le Caprice and stay a night or so. I shall talk to her, and
then ”

Zourolf laughed grimly.

“ Ma helUy your daughter detests me ; but I do not mind that.
You may say it out ; it will make no difference — to us.”

“You are wrong there,” said Lady Dolly so blandly and serenely
that even he was deceived, and believed her for once to be speaking
the truth. “ She neither likes you nor dislikes you, because her

90

MOTES.

mind is in its clirysalis statG — isn’t it a clirysalis,* the thing that is
rolled up in a shell asleep? — and of love and marvage my Vera is
as unconscious as those china children yonder holding up the
breakfast bouquets. She is cold, you know; that you see for
yourself ”

“ IJn beau dvfaut I ”

“ Un bvau defaut in a girl,” assented Lady Dolly. “Yes. I
would not have her otherwise, my poor fatherless darling, nor would
you, I know. But it makes it difficult to bring her to say ‘yes,’
you see ; not because she has any feeling against you, but simply
because she has no feeling at all as yet. Unless girls are precocious
it is alwa 3 ^s so — hush — don’t let them overhear us. We don’t want
it talked about at present, do we ? ”

“ As.you like,” said Zouroffi moodily.

He was offended, and yet he was pleased ; offended because he
was used to instantaneous victory, pleased because this grey-eyed
maiden proved of the stuff that he had fancied her. For a moment
ho thought he would take the task of persuasion out of her
mother’s hands and into his own, but he was an indolent man, and
effort was disagreeable to him, and he was worried at that moment
by the pretensions of one of the actresses at the maisoiinettc a mi\v
off across the park.

“ My Vera is not very well this morning. She has got a little
chill,” volunteered Eady Dolly to Madame Nelaguine, and tlie
table generally.

“1 saw Miss Herbert in the gardens as I went to bed at sunrise,”
said Fuschia Leach in her high far-reaching voice. “I surmise
morning dew is bad for the health.”

People laughed. It was felt there was “something” about
Vere and her absence, and the women were inclined to think that,
despite Loris and the silver collar, their host had not come to the
point, and Lady Dolly was about to retreat.

“ After all, it would , be preposterous,” they argued. “A child,
not even out, and one of those Mull Herberts without a penny.”

“Won’t you come down?” said Lady Dolly sliaiqdy to Vere a
little later.

“I will come down if I may say the truth to Prince Zouroff.”

“Until you accept him you will say nothing to him. It is
impossible to keep you here houdant like this. It becomes ridicu-
lous. What will all those women say ! . . . I will drive you over
to Laure’s. We will stay there a few days, and you will bear reason.”

“I will not marry Prince Zouroff,” said Vere.

After her first disgust and anger that subject scarcely troubled
her. They could not marry her against her will. She had only to
be firm, she thought ; and her nature was firm almost to stub-
bornness. ^

“We will see,” said her mother, drily. “ Uet ready to go with
me in an hour.”

MOTHS. 91

Vcrc, left to* licrfcjclf, undid the cellar of Loris, made it in a
packet, and wr<ite a little note, which said : —

I thank you very much, Monsieur, for the honour that I heat
from my mother you do me, in your wish that I should marry you.
Yet I wonder that you do wish it, because you know well that 1
have not that feeling for you which could make me care for oi
respect you. Please to take back this beautiful collar, which is too
heavy for Loris. Loris I will always* keep, and 1 am very fond ol
him. I should be glad if you would tell my mother that you have
had this letter, and I beg you to believe me. Monsieur, yours
gratefully,

“Veke Hekbekt.”

She read the note several times, and thought that it would do.
She did not like to write more coldly, lest she should seem heart-
less, and though her first impulse had been to look on the offer as
an insult, perhaps he did not mean it so, she reflected ; perhaps ho
(lid not understand how .she disliked him. She directed her packet,
and sealed it, and called her maid.

“ Will you take that to Monsieur Zouroff at once,” she said.
“ Give it to him into his own hands.”

''Phe maid took the packet to her superior, Adrienne ; AdrieniK?
the wise took4t to her mistress; Lady JDoll5^ glanced at it and [uit
it carelessly aside.

‘‘All ! the dog’s collar to go to Paris to be enlarged? very well;
leave it there ; it is of no comsecpiencc just now.”

Adrienne the wise understood very well.

“ If Mademoiselle ask you,” she instructed her underling, “ you
will say that Monsieur le Prince had the packet quite safe.”

But Vere did not even ask, because she had not lived long
enough in the world to doubt the good faith even of a waiting-
maid. At Bulmcr the servants were oldrfashioncd, like the place,
and the Waverley novels. They told the truth, as they wore boots
that wanted blacking.

If the little note bad found its way to Serge Zouroff it might
have touched his heart ; it would have touched his pride, and Vere
would have been left free. As it was, the packet reposed amidst
Lady Dolly’s pocket-handkerchiefs and perfumes till it was burnt
with a pastille in the body of a Japanese dragon.

Vere, quite tranquil, went to Le Caprice in the sunny afternoon
with her mother, never doubting that Prince Zouroff had had it.

She did not see him, and thought that it was because ho bad
read her message and resented it. In point of fact she did not see
him because he was at the maisonnetle in the park, where the femi-
nine portion of the troop had grown so quarrelsome and so exacting
that they were threatening to make him a scene up at the chateau.

What arc your great ladies better than wc ? ” they cried in

92

MOTHS.

revolt. He granted that tiny were no better; nevertheless, the
prejudices of society were so constituted that chS,tc^u and maison-
nette could not meet, and he bade their director bundle them all
back to Paris, like a cage of dangerous animals that might at any
moment escape.

“ You will be hero for the ball for the Prince do Galles ?” said
Princess N^laguine to Lady Dolly ; who nodded and laughed.

“ To be sure ; thanks ; I only go for a few days, love.”

" Are we coining back ? ” said Vere, aghast.

“ Certainly,” said her mother sharply, striking her ponies ; and
the child’s heart sank.

“But he will have had my letter,” she thought, “and then he
will let me alone.”

Le Caprice was a charming house, with a charming chatelaine,
and chan'ning people were gathered in it for the sea and the shoot-
ing; but Vere began to hate the pretty picturcscpie women, the
sound of the laughter, the babble of society, the elegance and the
luxury, and all the graceful nothings that make up the habits and
])leasures of a grand house. She felt very lonely in it all, and
when, for sake of her beauty, men gathered about her, she seemed
stujnd because she was iiiled with a shy terror of them ; perhaps
they would want to marry her too, she thought ; and her fair low
brow got a little frown on it that made lier look sullen.

“ Your daughter isdovely, ma chere, but she is rot sweet-tem-
pered like you,” said the hostess to Lady Dolly, who sighed.

“Ah no!” she answered, “ she is cross, jioor pet, sometimes,
and hard to please. Now, I am never out of temper, and any little
thing amuses me that my friends are kind enough to do. 1 don't
know where Vera got her character; from some dead and gone
Herbert, I suppose, who must have been very disagreeable in his
generation.”

And that night and every night she said the same thing to
Vere : “You must marry Serge Zouroff ; and Vere every night
• replied, “ I have told him I will not. I will not.”

Lady Dolly never let her know that her letter had been burned.

“Your letter?” she had said when Vere spoke of it. “No;
he never told me anything of it. But whatever you might say, he
wouldn’t mind it, my dear. You take his fancy, and he means to
marry you.”

“ Then ho is no gentleman,” said the girl.

“ Ob, about that, I don’t know,”* said Lady Dolly, “ Your idea
. of a gentleman, I believe, is a man who makes himself up as Faust
or Borneo, and screams % bo many guineas a night. We won’t
discuss that.” ^

Vere’s face burned, buf she was mute. It seemed to her that
her mother had grown coarse as well as cruel. There was a hard-
ness in her mother that she had never felt before. That her letter
should have been read by Hcvge Zouroff, yet make no impression

MOTHS. 93

on him, seemed to her so dastardly that it left her no hope to move
him ; no hope ^ny where except in her own resistance.

Three days later, Prince Zouroff drove over to Le Caprice, and
saw hady Dolly alone.

Verc was not asked for, and was thankful. Her eyes wistfully
questioned her mother’s when they met, but Lady Dolly’s were
luircvealiiig and did not meet her gaze.

The house was full of movement and of mirth; there were
sauteries every evening, and distractions of all kinds. Lady Dolly
was always flirting, laughing, dancing, amusing herself ; Ycrc was
silent, grave, and cold.

“ You are much younger than your daughter, Madame Dolly,”
said an old admirer ; and Lady Dolly ruffled those pretty curls
which had cost her fifty francs a lock.

“ Ah ! Youth is a thing of temperament more than ’of years.
That I do think. My A^era is so hard to please, and 1 — everything
amuses me, and every one to me seems charming.”

But this sunny, smiling little visage changed when, every even-
ing before dinner, she came to her daughter’s room, and urged, and
argued, and abused, and railed, and entreated, and sobbed, and said
her sermon again, and again, and again ; all in vain.

Vere said but few words, but they were always of the same
meaning.

“ 1 will not marry Prince ZourolF,” she sn-id always. “ It is of
no use to ask me. I will not.”

And the little frowr deepened between her eyes, and the smile
that Correze had seen upon her classic mouth now never came there.
She grew harassed and anxious.

ISince her letter had made no impression on him how could she
escape this weariness ?

One evening she heard some people in the drawing-rooms talk-
ing of Correze.

They said that he had been singing in t^o “Fidelio,” and surpass-
ing himself, and that a young and beautiful Grand Duchess had made
herself conspicuous by her idolatry of him ; so conspicuous that he
had been requested to leave Germany, and had refused, placing the
authorities in the difficult position of either receding ridiculously or
being obliged to use illegal force ; there would he terrible scandal
in high places, but Correze was always accapareur des femmes!

Vere moved away with a beating heart and a burning cheek ;
through the murmur of the conversation around her she seemed to
hear the exquisite notes of that one divine voice which had dropped
and deepened to so simple and tender a solemnity as it had bidden
her keep herself unspotted from the world.

“ What would ho say if he knew what they want me to do ! ”
she thought. “ If he knew that my mother even — my mother ! ”

For, not even though her mother was Lady Dolly, could Vere
quite abandon the fancy that motherhood was a sweet and sacred

94

MOTHS.

altar on which the young oould seek shelter and safety from all
evils and ills.

The week at Le Caprice came to an end, and the four days at
Abbaye aux Bois also, and, in the last hours of their two days at
the Abbaye, Lady Dully said to her daughter —

“ To-morrow is the Princes* ball at bYlicite, I suppose you re-
member ? ”

Vere gave a sign of assent.

“ That is the loveliest frock La Ferri6re has sent you for it ; if
you had any heart you would kiss me for such a gown, but you
have none, you never will have any.**

Vere was silent.

“ I must speak to you seriously and for the last time here,** said
licr mother. “ We go back to Felicite, and Sergius will want Ids
answer. ' I can put him off no longer.’*

He has had it.**

“How?** said Lady Dolly, forgetting for the moment the letter
she had burned. Oh, your letter ? Of course he regarded it as a
baby*s houtade ; I am sui’e it was badly worded enough.”

“ He showed it you, then?”

“ Yes ; he showed it me. It hurt him, of course ; but it did not
change him,” said her mother, a little hurriedly. “ Men of his ag(5
are not so easily changed. I tell you once for all, Vere, that I shall
come to you to-night ibr the last time for your fival word, and I
tell you that you must be seen at that ball to-morrow night as the
fianch of Zouroff. I am quite resolute, and I will have no more
shillyshallying or hesitation.”

Vero’s fiice grew warm, and she threw back her head with an
eager gesture.

Hesitation ! I have never hesitated for an instant. I tell
you, mother, and I have told you a hundred times, I will not marry
Prince Zouroff.”

You will wear the pew gown and you shall have my pearls,”
pursued her mother, as though she had not heard ; “ and I sliall
take care that when you are presented to his Royal Highness he
shall know that you are already betrothed to Zouroff ; it will be the
best way to announce it nettement to the world. You will not wear
my pearls again, for Zouroff has already ordered yours.”

Vere started to her feet.

And I will stamp them to pieces if he give them to me ; and
if you tell the Prince of Wales such a thing of mo I will tell him
the truth and ask his help ; ho is always kind and good.”

The pearls are ordered,” said her mother unmoved ; " and you
are really too silly for anything. The idea of making the poor Prince
a sdene ! — you have such a i)assion for scenes, and there is nothing
such bad form. 1 shall come to you to-night after dinner, and let
mo find you more reasonable.”

With that Lady Dolly went out of the room, and out of the

MOTHS.

95

house, and went on the sea with her adorers, laughing lightly and
Binging naughty little chansons not ill. But her heart was not as
light as her laugh, and, bold little woman as she was when she had
nerved herself to do wrong, her nerves troubled her as she thought
that the morrow was the last, ‘the very last, day on which she could
any longer procrastinate and dally with Serge ZourofF.

“ I will go and talk to her,” said Lady Stoat, who had driven
over from Felicitd, when she had been wearied by her dear Dolly’s
lamentations, until she felt that even her friendship could not bear
them much longer.

But she hates him,” cried Lady Dolly, for the twentieth time,
“ They always say that, dear,” answered Lady Stoat tranquilly,
“ They mean it, too, poor little things. It is just as they hated
their lessons, yet they did their lessons, dear, anil arc all the better
lor having done them. You seem to me to attach sadly foo much
importance to a child’s houtadesy

“ If it were only houtades / But you do not know Verc,”

I cannot think, dear, that your child can be so very extra-
ordinary unlike the rest of the human species,” said her friend with
her pleasant smile. “ Well, I will go and see this young monster.
She has always seemed to me a little Puritan, nothing worse, and
that you should have been prepared for, leaving her all her life at
Bulmor Chase.”

Lady Stoat then went upstairs and knocked at the door ofVere’s
chamber, and entered with the soft, silent charm of movement which
was one of the especial graces of that gracclul gentlewoman. She
kissed the girl tenderly, regardless that Vtiro drew herself away
somewhat rudtdy, and then sank down in a chair.

My child, do you know I am come to talk to you quite frankly
and affectionately,” she said in her gentle, slow voice. “ You know
what friendship has alv^ays existed between your dear mother and
myself, and you will believe that your welfare is dear to me for her
sake — very dear.”

Verc looked at her, but did not si)eak. '

“An uncomfortable girl,” thought Lady Stoat, a little discom-
fited, but she resumed blandly, “Your mamma has brought me
some news that it is very pleasant to hear, and gives me sincere
happiness, because by it your happiness, and through yours hers, is
secured. My own dear daughter is only two years older than you
are, Verc, and she is married, as you know, and ah I so happy I ”

“ Happy with the Duke of Birkenhead ? ” said Vere abruptly.
Lady Stoat was, for the moment, a little staggered.

“ What a very unpleasant child,” she thought ; “ and who would
think she knew anything about poor Birk 1 ”

^ “ Very happy,” she continued aloud, and I am charmed to
think, my dear, that you have the chance of being equally so.
Your mamma tells me, love, that you are a little — a little — be-
wildered at so brilliant a proposal of marriage as Prince ZourofTs.

96 MOTHB.

That is a very natural fearing; of course you had never thought
about any such thing.”

“ I had not thought about it,” said Vere bluntly. “ I have
thought now ; but I do not understand why he can want such a
thing. He knows very well that I do not like him. If you will
tell him for me that I do not I shall be glad ; my mother will never
tell him plainly enough.”

“ My sweet Vere I ” said Lady Stoat smilingly. Pray do not
give me the mission of breaking my host’s heart ; I would as soon
break his china ! Of course your mamma will not tell him any-
thing of the kind. She is charmed, my dear girl, charmed ! What
better future could she hope for, for you ? The ZourolTs are one ot
the greatest families in Europe, and I am quite sure your sentiments,
your jewels, your everything, will be worthy of the exalted place
you will fill.”

Vere’s face grew very cold.

“My mother has sent you?” she said, more rudely than hei
companion had ever been addressed in all her serene existence.
“ Tlicn will you kindly go back to her. Lady Stoat, and tell her it
is of no use ; I will not marry Prince Zouroff.”

“ That is not very prettily said, my dear. If I am come to talk
to you it is certainly in your own interests only. 1 have seen youhg
gilds like you throw all their lives away for mere want of a little
reflection.”

“I have reflected.”

“ Eoflected as mucli as sixteen can I— oh yes. But that is not
quite what I mean. I want you to reflect, looking through the
glasses of my experience and affection, and your mother’s. You arc
very young, Vere.”

“ Charlotte Gorday was almost as young as I am, and Jeanne
d’Arc.”

Lady Stoat stared, then laughed.

“ I don’t know where they come, either of them, in our argu-
ment, but if they had been married at sixteen it would have been
a very good thing for both of them ! You are a little girl now, my
child, though you are nearly six feet high I You arc a demoisdle d
marier. You can only wear pearls, and you are not even presented.
You are no one ; nothing. Society has hundreds like you. If you
do not marry, people will fiincy you are old whilst you are still
twenty ; people will say of you ‘ She is getting •pasaee ; she was
out years and years ago.’ Yes, they will say it oven if you are
handsomer than ever, and, what will be worse, you will be^i/i to
feel it**

Vere was silent, and Lady Stoat thought that she had made
some impression.

“You will begin to feel it; then you will be glad to marry
anybody, and there is nothing more terrible than that. You will
take a younger son of a baronet, or a secretary of legation that is

MOTES.

97

going to Hong K^ong or Cliili — ^anything, anybody, to get out of
yourself, and not to see your own face in the ball-room mirrors. Now,
if you marry early, and marry brilliantly — and this marriage is most
brilliant — no such terrors will await you ; you can wear diamonds ;
and, oh Vere ! till you wear diamonds you do not know what life is!
— you can go where you like, as you like, your own mistress ; you ai e
fosee ; you have made yourself a power while your contemporaries are
still debutantes in white frocks ; you will have your children, and find
all serious interests in them, if you like ; j^ou will have all that is
best in life, in fact, and have it before you are twenty; you will be
painted by Millais and clothed by Worth ; you will be a politician
if you like, or a fashionable beauty if you like, or only a great lady
— perhaps the simplest and best thing of all ; and you will be this,
and have all this, merely because you married early and married
well. My dear, such a marriage is to a girl like, being sent*on the
battlo-ficid to a boy in the army ; it is the baptism of fire with every
decoration as its rewards ! ”

“ The Cross too ? ” said Vere.

Lady Stoat, who had spoken eloquently, and, in her own light,
sincerely, was taken aback by the irony of the accent and the enigma
of the smile. A most strange child,” she thought ; ** no wonder
she worries poor flighty little pussy ! ”

“ The Cross ? Oh yes,” she said. “ What answers to the boy’s
Iron Cross, I sui)pose, is to dance in the Quj^drillo d’Honneur at
Court. Princess* Zouroff would always be in the Quadrille d’Hon-
neur.”

Princesse Zouroff may be so. I shall not. And it was of the
Cross you wear, and profess to worship, that I thought.”

Lady Stoat felt a little embarrassed. She bowed her head, and
touched the Iona cross in jewels that hung at her throat.

“ Darling, those are serious and solemn words. A great marriage
may be made subservient, like any other action of our lives, to God’s
service,”

But surely one ought to love, to marry ? ”

“ My dear child, that is an idea ; love is an idea ; it doesn’t last,

you know ; it is fancy ; what is needful is solid esteem ”

Lady Stoat paused ; even to her it was difficult to speak of solid
esteem for Sergius Zouroff. She took up another and safer line of
argument.

“You must learn to understand, my sweet Vere, that life is
prose, not poetry ; Heaven forbid that I should be one to urge you
to any sort of worldliness; but still, truth is everything; truth
compels me to point out to you that, in the ago we live in, a great
position means vast power and ability of doing good, and that is
not a thing to be slighted by any wise woman who would make her
life beautiful and useful. Prince Zouroff adores you ; he can give
you one of the first positions in Europe ; your mother, who loves
, you tenderly, though she may seem negligent, desires such a mar-

H

98

MOTES.

riage for you beyond all others. Oppositiorv on your part is
foolishness, my child, fooli^ness, blindness, and rebellion.”

The face of Vere as she listened lost its childish softness, and
grew very cold,

“I understand; my mother docs not want me, Mr. Yander-
decken does not want me ; this Kussian prince is the first who asks
for me, — so I am to be sold because he is rich. I will not bo
sold!”

“What exaggerated language, my love! Pray do not exag-
gerate ; no one uses inflated language now ; even on the stage they
don't, it has gone out. Who speaks of your being sold, as if you
w^ere a slave ? Quelle idee ! A brilliant, a magnificent alliance is
open to you, that is all ; every unmarried woman in society will
envy you. I assure you if Prince Zouroff had solicited the hand of
my own daughter, I vrould have given it to him with content and
joy.”

“ I have no doubt you would,” said the girl curtly.

Lady Stoat's sweet temper rose a little under the words.

“ You arc very beautiful, my dear, but your manners leave very
much to be desired,” she said almost sharply. “If you were not
poor little Dolly's child I should not trouble myself to reason with
you, but lot you destroy yourself like an obstinate baby as you are.
What can be your objection to Prince Sergius? Now be reasonable
for once ; tell me.” .

“I am sure he is a bad man.”

“ My love I What should you know about bad men or nood
ones either ? ”

“ I am sure ho is bad— and cruel.”

“ What nonsense 1 I am sure he has been charming to you,
and you are very ungrateful. What can have given yon such an
impression of your devoted adorer ? ”

Yere shuddered a little with disgust.

“ I hate him ! ” she said under her breath.

Lady Stoat for a moment was startled,

* * Where could she get her melodrama from ? ” she wondered.

“Dolly was never melodramatic; nor any of the Herbert people;
it really makes one fancy poor pussy must have had a petite faute
with a tragic actor I ”

Aloud she answered gently —

“ You have a sad habit, my Yere, of using very strong words ;
It IS not nice; and you do not mean one-tenth that you say in
your haste. No Christian ever bates, and in a girl such a feeling
woim be horrible — ^if you meant it — ^but you do not mean it.”

+ 1 , proud lips closer, but there was a meaning upon

tnem that made her companion hesitate, and feel uncomfortable,
ana at a loss for words.

n ** that pussy should ever have had a daughter

like this I she thought, and then smiled in a sweet, mild win .

MOTES.

99

“ Poor Serge 1 That he should l^ve been the desired of all
Europe, only to he rejected by a child of sixteen 1 Really it is
like — who wawiT? — ^winning a hundred battles and then dying of a
cherry-stone I There is nothing he couldn’t give you, nothing ho
wouldn’t give you, you thankless little creature 1 ”

Vere, standing very slender and tall, with her face averted, and
lier fair head in the glow of the sunset light, made no reply ; but
licr attitude and her silence were all eloquent.

Lady Stoat thought to herself, “ Dear, dear I what a charming
Iphigenia she would look in a theatre ; but there is no use for all
lliat in real life. How to convince her ? ”

Even Lady Stoat was perplexed.

She began to talk vaguely and gorgeously of the great place of
the Zouroff family in the world ; of their enormous estates, of their
Uraline mines, of their Imperial favour, of their right to sit covered
at certain courts, of their magnificence in Paris, their munificence
in Petersburg, their power, their fashion, and their pomp.

Vero waited, till the long discursive descriptions ended of them-
selves, exhausted by their own oratory. Then she said very simply
and very coldly —

** Do you believe in God, Lady Stoat ? ”

'' In God?” echoed Lady Stoat, shocked and amazed.

** Do you or not ? ”

My dear ! ^ Goodness ! Pray do not say such things to me.
As if I were an*infidel ! — II ”

“ I'lien how can you bid me take Ilis name in vain, and marry
Prince Zourolf ? ”

“ I do not see' the connection,” began Lady Stoat vaguely, and
very wearily'.

“ I have read the marriage service,” said Vere, with a passing
heat upon her pale cheeks for a moment.

Lady Stoat for once was silent.

She was very nearly going to reply that the marriage service
was of old date and of an exaggerated style ; that it was not in
good taste, and in no degree to be interpreted literally ; but such
an avowal was impossible to a "woman who revered the ritual of her
Church, and was bound to accept it unquestioned. So she was
silent and vanquished — ^so far.

“ May I go now? ” said Vere.

“ Certainly, love, if you wish, but you must let me talk to you
again, I am sure you will change and please your mother — your
lovely little mother ! — whom you ought to live for, you naughty
child, BO sweet and so dear as .she is.”

“ She has never lived for me,” thought Vere, but she did not
say so; she merely made the deep courtesy she had learned at
Bulmer Chase, which had the serene and stately grace in it of
another century than her own, and, without another word, passed
out of the room.

100

MOTES.

Quel enfant /” murmured Lady St'=)at, with a shiver

and a sigh.

Lady Stoat was quite in earnest, and meant '\Vcll. She knew
l)crfectly that Sergius Zourofif was a man whose vices were such as
the world does not care even to name, and that his temper was
that of a savage hull-dog allied to the petulant exactions of a spoilt
child. She knew that perfectly, but she had known as bad things
of her own son-in-law, and had not stayed her own daughter’s
marriage on that account.

Position was everything, Lady Stoat thought, the man himself
nothing. Men were all sadly much alike, she believed. Being
a woman of refined taste and pure life, she did not even think
about such ugly things as male vices.

Lady Stoat was one of those happy people who only see just so
much as they wish to see. It is the most comfortable of all
myopisms. She had had, herself, a husband far from virtuous, but
she had always turned a deaf ear to all who would have told her of his
failings. “ I do my own duty; that is enough for me,” she would
answer sweetly ; and, naturally, she wondered why other women
could not be similarly content with doing theirs — ^when they had a
Position. Without a position she could imagine, good woman
though sfie was, that things were very trying ; and that people
worried more. As for herself, she never worried, and she had no
sympathy with worty in any shape. So that when Lady Dolly
came to her weeping, excited, furious, hopeless, over her daughter’s
wicked obstinacy, Lady Stoat only laughed at her in a gentle
rallying way.

“ You little goose ! As if girls were not always like that ! She
has got Corr^ze in her head still, and she is a difiicult sort of
nature, I grant. What does it matter after all ? You have only to
be firm. She will come to reason.”

“ But I never, never could bo firm,” sobbed Lady Dolly. “ The
Herberts are, I am not. And Vere is just like her father ; when I
asked him to have a ’stole and a rochet and look nice, nothing
would induce him, because ho said something about his bishop ”

Lady Stoat, in her superior wisdom, smiled once more.

“ Was poor Vere so very low in the matter of vestments? How
curious ; the Herberts were Catholic until James the First’s time.
But why do you fret so ? The child is a beauty, really a beauty.
Even if she j^rsist in her hatred of Zourofif she will marry well, I
am sure ; and she must not persist in it. You must have common
sense.^^

“ But what can one do ? " said Lady Dolly in desperation. “ It
is all very easy to talk, but it is not such a little thing to force a
girl’s will in these days ; She can make a fuss, and then society
abuses you, and I think the police even can interfere, and the Lord
Chancellor, if she have no father.”

And Lady Dolly aobbed afresh.

MOTES. 101

“Dear little goose!” said Lady ^toat consolingly, but rather
wearied. “ Of Bourse nobody uses force : there are a thousand
pleasant ways — children never know what is best for them. W e, who
are their nearest and dearest, ‘must take care of their tender, foolish,
ignorant young lives, committed to us for guidance, Gwendolen
even was reluctant — but now in every letter she sends me she
says, ^Oh, mamma, how right you were!* That is what your
Vere will say to you, darling, a year hence, when she will have
been Princess Zourolf long enough to have got used to him.”

Lady Dolly shivered a little at all that the words implied.

Her friend glanced at her.

“ If Zourofif cause you apprehension for any reason I am unaware
of,” she said softly, “ there are others ; though, to be sure, as your
pretty child is portionless, it may be difficult ” •

^*No, it must be ZourolT,” said Lady Dolly, nervously and
quickly. “ She has no money, as you say ; and every one wants
money nowadays.”

“ Except a Russian,** said Lady Stoat, with a smile. “ Then,
since you wish for him, take him now he is to be had. But I
would advise you not to dawdle, love. Men like him, if they are
denied one fancy soon change to another ; and he has all the world
to console him for Vere*s loss.’*

I have told him he should have her answer in a day or two.
I said she was shy, timid, too surprised ; he seems to like that.”

'‘Of course ho likes it. Men always like it in women they
mean to make their wives. Then, in a day or two, you must con-
vince her ; that is all. I do not say it will be easy with her very
obstinate and peculiar temperament. But it will be possible.”

Lady Dolly was mute.

She envied her dear Adino that hand of steel under the glove
of velvet. She herself had it not. Lady Dolly was of that pliant
temper, which, according to the temperature it dwells in, becomes
either harmless or worthless. She had nothing of the maitresse
femme about her. She was always doing things that she wished
were undone, and knotting entanglements that she could not un-
ravel. She was no ruler of others, except in a coquettish, petulant
fashion, of “ Jack — and the rest.”

And she had that terrible drawback to comfort and impediment
to success — a conscience, that was sluggish and fitful, and sleepy
and' feeble, but not wholly dead. Only this conscience, unhappily,
was like a very tiny, weak swimmer, stemming a very strong op-
posing tide.

In a moment or two the swimmer gave over, and the opposing
tide had all its own way.

After dinner that evening, whilst the rest were dancing, Vere
slipped away unnoticed to her own room, a little tiny turret-room,
of which the window almost overhung the sea. She opened the
lattice, and leaned out into the cool fragrant night. The sky was

102 MOTUa.

f' *

cloudless, tlie sea silvery in the moonlight ; from the gardens below
there arose the scent oF datura and tuberose. It 'v^as all so peace-
ful and so sweet, the girl could not understand why, amidst it all,
she must be so unhappy.

Since Zourofif had had her letter there was no longer any hope
of changing his resolve by telling him the truth, and a sombre
hatred began to grow up in her against this man, who seemed to
her her tormentor and her tyrant.

What hurt her most was that her own mother should urge this
horror upon her.

She could see no key to the mystery of such a wish except in
the fact that her mother cruelly desired to be rid of her at all cost ;
and she had written a letter to her grandmother at Buhner Chase—
a letter that lay by her on the table ready to go down to the post-
bag in the morning.

“Grandmamma loves me in her own harsh way,** the child
thought. “ She will take me back for a little time at least, and
then, if she do not like to keep me, perhaps I could keep myself in
some way ; I think I could if they would let me. I might go to
the Fraulein in her own country and study music at Baireuth, and
make a career of it. There would be no shame in that.’*

And the thought of Corr^ze came softly over her as the memory
of fair music will come in a day-dream.

Not as any thought of love. She had read no romances save
dear Sir Walter’s, which alone, of all the erring tribe of fiction,
held a place on the dark oak-shelves of the library at Biilmer.

Correze was to her like a beautiful fancy rather than a living
being, — a star that shot across a smnmer sky and passed unseen to
brighter worlds than ours.

Ho was a saint to the child — he who to himself was a sad
sinner — and his words dwelt in her heart like a talisman against
all evil.

She sat all alone, and dreamt innocently of going into the
mystic German land and learning music in all ils heights and
depths, and living nobly, and being never wedded (“ Oh, never,
never!” she said to herself with a hirning face and a shrinking
heart) ; and some day meeting Correze, the wonder of the world,
and looking at him without shame and saying, “ I have done as
you told me ; I have never been burnt in the flame as you feared.
Are you glad?”

It did not, as yet, seem hard to her to do so. The world was
to her personified in the great vague horror of Serge ZourofTs
name, and it cost her no more to repulse it than it costs a child to
flee from some painted monster that gapes at it from a wall.

Tliis night, after Lady Stoat’s ineffectual efforts at conversion,
Lady Dolly herself once sought her daughter, and renewed
the argument with raor^- asperity and more caUousness than she
had previously shown. «

MOTES. 103

Vere was still sitting in her own cltamber, trying to read, but,
in truth, always thinking of the bidding of Correze, Keej) your-
self unspotted from the world.”

Dreaming so, with her hands buried in the golden clusteriug
hair, and her lids drooped over her eyes, she started at the voice of
licr mother ; and, with pain and impatience, listened with unwilling
ear to the string of reproaches, entreaties, and censure that had
lately become as much the burden of her day as the morning-
])rayer at Bulmer had been, droned by the duchess’s dull voice to
the sleepy household.

Vere raised herself and listened, with that dutifulness of the
old fashion which contrasted so strangely in her, her mother
thought, with her rebellion and self-willed character. But she grew
very weary.

Lady Dolly, less delicate in her diplomacy than her friend had
been, did not use euphuisms at all, nor attempt to take any high
moral point. Broadly and unhesitatingly she painted all that
Sergius ZourofF had it in his power to bestow, and the text of her
endless sermon -was, that to reject such gifts was wickedness.

At the close she grew passionate.

** You think of love,” she said. " Oh, it is of no use your say-
ing you don’t; you do. All girls do. I did. I married your
father. We were as much in love as any creatures in a poem.*
When I had lived a month in that wretched jfarsonage by the sea,
I knew what a little fool I had been. I had had such wedding
presents ! — such presents ! The queen had sent mo a cachemire for
poor papa’s sake ; yet, down in that horrid place, wo had to eat
pork, and there was only a metal teapot ! Oh, you smile ! it is
nothing to smile at. Vere used to smile just as you do. Ho would
have taken the cachemire to wrap an old woman up in, very pro-
bably ; and ho wouldn’t have known whether he ate a peach or a
pig, I knew ; and whenever they put that tea in the metal teai30t,
1 knew the cost of young love. Kespect .your father’s memory ?
Stuff! I am not saying anything against him, poor dear fellow; he
was very good — in his way, excellent ; but he had made a mistake,
and I too. I told him so twenty times a day, and he only sighed
and went out to his old women. I tell you this only to show you
I know what I am talking about. Love and marriage are two
totally different things ; they ought never to be named together ;
they are cat and dog ; one kills the other. Pray do not stare so ;
you make me nervous,”

“It is not wicked to love?” said Vere slowly.

“Wicked? no; what noirscnse! It amuses one; it doesn’t
last.”

“ A great love must last, till death, and after it,” said the child,
with solemn eyes.

“After it?” echoed Lady Dolly with a little laugh. “I’m
afraid that would make a very naughty sort of place of Heaven.

104

MOTHS.

Don’t look so shocked, chili. You know nothing about it. Believe
me, dear, where two lovers go on year after year, h is only for Pont
de Veyle’s reason to Madame de Deffand : ‘ Nous sommes si mor-
tellement ennuy4s Tun de Tautre que nous ne pouvons plus nous
quitter ! ’ ”

Vero was silent. Her world of dreams was turned upside down,
and shaken rudely.

“ You have no heart, Vere ; positively none,” said her mother
bitterly, resuming all the old argument. “ I can scarcely think
you are my child. You see mo wearing myself to a shadow for
3 ^our sake, and yet you have no pity. What in heaven’s name can
you want? You are only sixteen, and one of the first marriages in
Europe opens to you. You ought to go on your knees in thankful-
ness, and yet you hesitate ? ”

“ I do not hesitate at all,” said Vere quickly. “ I refuse ! ”

She rose as she spoke, and looked older by ten years. There
was a haughty resolve in her attitude that cowed her mother for an
instant.

“ I refuse,” she said again. “ And, if you will not tell Monsieur
Eouroff so yourself, I will tell him to-morrow. Listen, mother, I
have written to Bulmer, and I will go back there. Grandmamma
will not refuse to take me in. I shall be a trouble and care to you
no longer. I am not made for your world nor it for me. I will go.
I have some talent, they have always said, and at least I have per-
severance. I will find some “way of maintaining myself. I want
so little, and I know enough of music to teach it ; and so at least
a shall bo free and no burden upon any one.”

She paused, startled by her mother’s laughter; such laughter
as she, in a later day, heard from Croizette when Croizette was
acting her own deathbed on the stage of the Fran^ais.

Lady Dolly’s shrill, unnatural, ghastly laughter echoed through
the room.

^‘Is that your scheme? To teach music? And Correzo to
teach you, I suppose ? Ola Mle idie J You little fool ! you little
idiot I how dare you ? Because you are mad, do you think we are
mad too ? Go to Bulmer nota f Never I I am your mother, and
you shall do what I chooso. What I choose is that you shall marry
Zouroff.”

“ I will not.”

Will not? will not? I say you shall I ”

“ And I say that I will not.”

They confronted one another; the girl’s face pale, clear, and
cold in its fresh and perfect beauty, the woman’s grown haggard,
fevered, and fierce in its artificial prettiness.

” I will not,” repeated Vere with her teeth closed. « And my
dead father would say I was right; and I will tell this man to-
morrow that I loathe him ; and, since surely he must have some
pride to be stung, he will ask for me no more then.”

MOTHS. 105

‘*Vere! you kill me!” screamed her mother; and, in truth,
she fainted, her pretty curly perriique twisting off her head, her
face deathly pallid save for the unchanging, hloom of cheek and
mouth.

It was hut a passing swoon, and her maid soon restored her to
semi-consciousness and then boro her to her room.

“What a cold creature is that child,” thought Adrienne, of
Vere. “ She sees miladi insensible, and stands there with never a
tear, or a kiss, or a cry. What it is to have been brought up iu
l^ngland!”

Vere, left alone, sat awhile lost in thought, leaning her head on
her hands. Then she rang and ‘bade them post the letter to Bul-
mer ; the dark and drearsome, but safe and familiar home of her lost
childhood.

The letter gone, she undressed and went to bed. It was mid-
night. She soon was asleep.

Innocent unhappiness soon finds this rest ; it is the sinful sorrow
of later years that stares, with eyes that will not close, into the
liateful emptiness of night.

She slept deeply and droamlessly, the moonbeams through the
liigh window finding her out whore she lay, her slender limbs,
supple as willow wands, in calm repose, and her long lashes lying
on her cheeks.

Suddenly sh^ woke, startled and alarmed.* A light fell on her
eyes ; a hand touched her ; she was no longer alone.

She raised herself in her bed, and gazed with a dazzled sight
aud vague terror into the yellow rays of the lamp.

“ Vere I It is I! it is I ! ” cried her mother with a sob in her
voice. And Lady Dolly dropped on her knees beside the bed ; her
real hair dishevelled on her shoulders, her face without false bloom
and haggard as the face of a woman of twice her own years.

“ Vcie, Vere! you can save me,” she muttered, with her hands
clasped tight on the girl’s, “ Oh, my dear, I never thought to tell
you ; hut, since you will hear no reason, what can I do ? Vere,
wake up — listen. I am a guilty, silly woman ; guiltier, sillier, than
you can dream. You are my child after all, and owe me some
obedience ; and you can save me. Vere, Vere ! do not^ cruel ;
do not misjudge me, but listen. You must marry Sergiu&Zouroff.”

It was dawn when Lady Dolly crept away from her (mughtcris
chamber ; shivering, ashamed, contrite, in so far as humiliation and
regret make up contrition ; hiding her blanched face with the hood
of her wrapper as though the faint, white rays of daybreak were
spectators and witnesses against her.

Vere lay quite still, as she had fallen, upon her bed, her face
iil)turncd, her hands clenched, her shut lips blue as with great cold.
Slic had promised what her mother had asked.

106

MOTES.

CHAPTER IX.

On the morrow it was known to all the guests of the house at
which they were staying that the head of the Princes Zouroff was
to marry the daughter of the Lady Dorothy Vanderdecken.

On the morrow Lady Dolly drove back to P61ioit6, with her
daughter beside her.

She was victorious.

The sun was strong, and the east wind cold ; she was glad that
they wore so. The eyes of her daughter were heavy with dai k
circles beneath them, and her face was blanched to a deadly pallor,
which changed to a cruel crimson flush as the turrets and belfries
of the chateau of the Zouroffs came in sight above the woods of its
park.

They had driven the eight miles from Le Caprice in unbroken
silence.

“ If sbe would only speak I ” thought Lady Dolly ; and yet she
felt that she could not have borne it if her companion had spoken.

They drove round toa^fi<t^een^re%atthe back of the house, and
were met by no one but some bowing servant. She had begged in
a little note that it inight be so, making some pretty plea for Vere
of maiden shyness. They were shown straight to their rooms. It
was early ; noonday. The chateau was quite still. At night the
great ball was to be given to the English princes, but the hous(3-
hold was too well trained to make any disturbance with their
preparations. Down the steps of the great terrace there was
stretched scarlet cloth, and all the face of the building was hung
with globes and cressets of oil, to be lit at dark. These were the
only outward signs that anything more brilliant than usual was
about to take place.

“You will come to breakfast?” said Lady Dolly, i^ausiiig at
the threshold of her room.

It was the first word she had said to Vere since the dawn, when
they had parted, and her own voice sounded strange to her.

Vere shuddered as with cold.

“ I cannot. Make some excuse.”

“What is the use of putting off?” said her mother fretfully.
“ You will be ill ; you are ill. If you should be ill to-night, what
will every one say? what will he think? what shall I do?”

Vere went into her chamber and locked her door. She locked
out even her maid ; fiung her hat aside, and threw herself forward
on the bed, face downward, and there lay.

Lady Dolly went into her chamber, and glanced at her own
face with horror. Though made up, as well as usual, for the day,
she looked yellow, worn, old.

“ J must go down! ” she thought— how selfish youth was, and

MOTES. 107

how lord a thing was motherhood I She had herself .dressed
beautifully and to®k some ether.

She had sunk her drowned conscience fathoms deep, and begun
once more to pity herself for the obstinacy and oddness of the child
to whom she had given birth. Why could not the girl be like any
others ?

The ether began to move in her veins and swim in her head ;
her eyes grew brighter. She went out of her room and along the
corridor to the staircase, fastening an autumn rose or two in her
breast, taken from the bouquet of her dressing-table. As she
glanced down the staircase into the hall where the servants in the
canary-coloured liveries of the house were going to and fro, she
thought of all the rank and riches of which Felicitd was only one
trifling portion and symbol, and thought to herself that — after all
— any mother would have done as she had done ; and no maiden
surely could need a higher reward for the gift of her innocence to
the minotaur of a loveless marriage.

"If I had been married like that!** she thought; and felt that
she had been cruelly wronged by destiny ; if she had been married
like that, how easy it would have been to have become a good
woman! What could Vere complain of? — the marriage was per-
fect in a worldly sense, and in any other sense-— did it matter what
it was?

So the ether whispered to her.

She began to taste the sweets of her victory and to forget the
bitter, as the ether brought its consoling haze over all painful
memories, and lent its stimulating brightness to all personal
vanities.

After all it was very delightful to go down those stairs, knowing
that when she met all those dear female friends whom she detested,
and who detested her, no one could pity her and every one must
envy her. She had betrothed her daughter to one of the richest
and best born men in all Europe. Was dt not the crown ol
maternity, as maternity is understood in society ?

So down she went, and crossed the great vestibule, looking
young, fair, and bewitching with the roses in her bosom, and an
admirably cl^osen expression on her face, half glad and half plain-
tive, and with a flush imder her paint that made her look prettier
than ever ; her eyes sparkled, her smile was all sunshine and. sweet-
ness, she pressed the hands of her most intimate friends with an
eloquent tenderness, she was exquisitely arrayed with cascades of
old Mechlin falling from her throat to her feet.

^ " A mother only lives to be young again in her child 1 ** sho
said softly — and knew that she looked herself no more than twenty
years old as she said it.

Sergius Zouroff, profuse in delicate compliment to her aloud,
said to himself—

" Brava^ naughty Dolly ! Bia-hu I Will she ever l)e like you,

108

MOTHS.

I wonder? Perhaps. The world makes you all alike after a little
while.” *

He was ready to pay a high price for innocence, because it was
a new toy that pleased him. But he never thought that it would
last, any more than the bloom lasts on the peach. He had no
illusions. Since it would be agreeable to brush it oif himself, he
was ready to purchase it.

There was a sense of excitement and of disappointment in the
whole house-party; and Princesse Ndlaguine ran from one to
another, with her little bright Tartar eyes all aglow, murmuring
“ CharmeCy charmoe^ charm& 1 ” to impatient ears.

“ Such a beast as he is 1 ” said the men who smoked his cigars
and rode his horses.

“ And she who looked all ice and innocence I ” said the women,
already in arms against her.

Vere did not come down to taste the first-fruits of her triumph.

At the great midday breakfast, where most people assembled,
she was absent. Zouroff himself laid another bouquet of orchids
by her plate, but she was not there to receive the delicate homage.

“Mademoiselle Vera has not risen?” he asked now, with an
angry contraction of his low brows, as no one came where the
orchids were lying.

“ Vera had a headache,” said Lady Dolly serenely aloud. “ Or
said so,” she murmured to his ear alone. “Don't bo annoyed.
She was shy. She is a little farouche, you know, my poor darling.”

Zouroff nodded, and took his caviare,

“ What did I predict, love! ” murmured Lady Stoat, of Stitchley,
taking her friend aside after breakfast. “But how quieddy you
succeeded! Last evening only you were in despair! Was the
resistance only a feint? Or what persuasions did you bring to
bear?”

“ I threatened to send her to Bulmer Chase ! ” said Lady Dolly
with a little gay laugh. Lady Stoat laughed also.

“I wonder what you did do,” she reflected, however, as she
laughed. “ Oh, naughty little pussy — foolish, foolish little pussy !
—to have any secrets from me ! ”

The day wore away and Vere Herbert remained unseen in
Felicitc.

The guests grew surprised, and the host angered.

Princesse N41aguine herself had ascended to the girl’s room,
and had been deni^.

People began to murmur that it was odd.

“ Go and fetch her,” said Zouroff in a fierce whisper. “ It is
time that I at least should see her — ^unless you have told me a lie,”

“Unless she be really ill, I suppose you mean, you cruel
creature!” said her mother reproachingly ; but she obeyed him
and went.

“ Girls are so fond of tragedy 1 ” reflected Lady Stoat, recalling

MOTHS.

m

episodes in the betrothal of her own daughter, and passages that
had preceded it. * ^

It was now lire o’clock. The day had been chilly, as it is at
times along the channel shores, even in summer. Several persons
were in the blue-room, so called because of its turquoise silk walls
and its quantities of Delf, Nankin, Savona, and other blue china
ranged there. It was the room for afternoon tea. Several of the
ladies were there in tea-gowns of the quaintest and prettiest, that
allowed them to lie about in the most gracefully tired attitudes.
The strong summer sun found its way only dimly there, and the
sweet smells of the flowers and of the sea were overborne by the
scent of the pastilles burning in the bodies of blue china monsters.

Zouroff, who at times was very negligent of his guests, was
pacing up and down the long dim chamber impatiently, and every
now and then he glanced at the door. He did not look once at
the pretty groups, like eighteenth-century pictures tinged with the
languor of odalisques, that were sipping tea out of tiny cups in an
alcove lined with celadon and crackling. The tinkle of the tea-
cups and the ripple of the talk . ceased as the door at the farther
end opened, and Vere entered, led by her mother.

She was white, and cold, and still ; she did not raise her eyelids.

Zourofi* approached with eager steps, and bowed before her with
the dignity that he could very well assume when he chose.

‘‘ Mademoiselle,” he said softly, “ is it true that you consent to
make the most unworthy of men the most hap5?y ? ”

lie saw a slight shudder pass over her as if some cold wind had
smitten her.

She did not lift her eyes,

^ “ Since you wish, monsieur ” she answered very low, and

then paused.

“ The adoration of a life shall repay you,” he murmured in the
conventional phrase, and kissed her hand.

In his own thoughts he said ; “ Your mother has made you do
this, and you hate me. Never mind.”

Then he drew her hand on his arm, and led her to the Princess
Nelaguine.

**My sister, embrace your sister. I shall have two angels
henceforth instead of one, to watch and pray for my erring soul ! ”

Princess Nelaguine did not smile. She kissed the cold cheek of
the girl with a glisten of tears in her eyes.

“ What a sacrifice 1 what a martyrdom \ ” she thought. Ah,
the poor child !— but perhaps he will ranger — ^let us hope.”

All the while Vera might have been made of marble, she was
so calm and so irresponsive, and she never once lifted her eyes.

“ Will you not look at me once ? ” he entreated. She raised her
lids and gave him one fleeting hunted glance. Cruel though he
was and hardened, Sergius Zouroff felt that look go to his soul.

“ Bah 1 how she loathes me I ” he said in his teeth. But the

110

MOTES.

compasdon in him died out almost as it was .born, and the base
appetites in him were only whetted and made keener by this
knowledge.

Lady Stoat glided towards them and lifted her lips to Yera’s cheek.

“My sweet child! so charmed, so delighted,” she whispered,
“ Did I not say how it would be when your first shyness had time
to fold its tents, as the poem says, and steal away ? ”

^ “You are always a prophetess of good — ^and my mother's friend,”
said Verc. They were almost the first words she had spoken, and
they chilled even the worldly breast of her mother’s friend.

There was an accent in them which told of a childhood
2 >erished in a night; of an innocence and a faith stabbed, and
stricken, and buried for ever more.

“You are only sixteen, and you will never be young any
more!*” thought Trincess N61aguine, hearing the cold and bitter
accent of those pregnant words.

But the ladies that made the eighteenth-century picture had
broken up and issued from the alcove, and were olfering congratula-
tions and compliments in honeyed phrases ; and no one heeded or
had time for serious thought.

Only Lady Dolly, in a passionate murmur, cried, unheeded by
any, to her daughter’s ear —

“For heaven’s sake smile, blush, seem happy! What will
they say of you to, look at you like this ? — they will say that I
coerce you ! ”

“ I do my best,” answered Yore coldly.

“ My lovely mother-in-law,” muttered Prince Zouroff, bending
to Lady Dolly, as ho brought her a cup of tea, “ certainly you did
not lie to me this morning when you told me that your Yera would
marry me ; but did you not lie — -just a little lie, a little white one
— when you said she would love me ? ”

“ Love comes in time,” murmured Lady Dolly hurriedly. '

Serge ZourofF laughed grimly.

“Does it? I fear tliat experience tells one rather that with
time — it goes.”

“ Yours may; hors will come — the woman’s always comes last.”

“ Ma chore I your new theories are astounding. Nevertheless,
as your son-in-law, I will give in my adhesion to them. Henceforth
all the SQX of yoiu: Yera— and yourself — is purity and perfection in
my sight I ”

Lady Dolly smiled sweetly in his face.

“It is never too late to bo converted to the truth,” she said
playfully, whilst she thought, “ Oh you beast ! If I could strangle
you ! ”

Meanwhile Princess Nelaguinc was saying with kindness in her
tone and gaze —

sweet child 1 you look chilly and pale. Were you wise to
leave your room out of goodness to us ? ”

M0TH8.

Ill

“I am cold,” murmured Vere faintjy. “ I should be glad if I
might go away — for a little.”

Impossible, * said the Princess; And added, ^‘Doar, reflect;
it will look so strange to people. My brother—”

** I will stay, then,” said Vere wearily, and she sat down and
received the homage of one and the felicitations of another, still
with her oyes always cast downward, still with her young face
passionless, and chill as a mask of marble.

** An hour’s martyrdom more or less— did it matter ? ” she said
to herself. All her life would be a martyrdom, a long mute
martyrdom, now. '

A few hours later her maid dressed her for the ball. She had
no need of her mother’s pearls, for those which had been ordered
from Paris jewellers were there ; the largest and purest pearls that
ever Indian diver plunged for into the deep sea. When they were
clasped about her they seemed to her in no way different, save in
their beauty, to the chains locked on slave-girls bought for the
harqm. But that was because she had been taught such strange
ideas.

She was quite passive.

She resisted nothing; having given away in the one great thing,
why should she dispute or rebel for trifles ? A sense of unreality
liad come upon her, as it comes on people in the first approach
of fever.

She walked,* sat, spoke, heard, all as in a dream. It seei^d to
her as if she were already dead : only the pain was alive in the
horrible sickening pain that would never be stilled, but only grow
sharper and deeper with each succeeding hour.

She sat through the banquet, and felt all eyes upon her, and
was iiidifTorent. Let them stare as they would, as they would stare
at the sold slave-girl.

She has too much self-possession for such a child, said the
women there, and they thought that Sergius Zouroff would not
find in her the young saint that he fancied he had won.

Her beauty was only greater for her extreme pallor and the
darkness beneath her eyes. But it was no longer the beauty of an
innocent unconscious child ; it was that of a woman.

Now and then she glanced at her mother, at that pretty co-
quettish little figure, semi-nude, as fashion allowed, and with
diamonds sparkling everywhere on her snow-white skin; with a
perpetual laugh on cherubic lips, and gaiety and grace in each
movement. And whenever she glanced there, a sombre scornful
fire came into her own gaze, an unutterable contempt and disgust
watched wearily from the fair windows of her soul.

She was thinking to herself as she looked : Honour thy father
and thy mother. That was the old law ! Were there such women
then as she was now ? Or was that law too a dead letter, as the
Marriage Sacrament was ?

112

MOTES.

“ She is exquisitely lovgly,” said the great personage in whose
honour the banquet and the ball were being given. “ In a year or
two there will be nothing so beautiful as she will be in all Europe.
But — is she well — is she happy ? Forgive the question.”

Oh, sir, she is but made nervous by the honour of your praise,”
said her mother, who was the person addressed. “ Your Royal
Highness is too kind to think of her health, it is perfect ; indeed I
may say, without exaggeration, that neither morally nor physically
has my sweet child given me one hour’s anxiety since her birth.”

The Priuco bowed, and said some pleasant gracious words ; but
his conviction remained unchanged by Lady Lolly’s assurance of
her daughter’s peace and joy.

Vere was led out by Prince Zouroff to join the Quadrille
d’Honneur.

“ This is the Iron Cross 1 ” she thought, and a faint bitter smile
parted her lips.

She never once lifted her eyes to meet his.

“ Cannot you tell me you are happy, mon enfant he murmured
once. She did not look at him, and her lips scarcely moved as she
answered him.

“ I obey my mother, monsieur. Do not ask more.”

Zouroff was silent. The dusky red of his face grew paler ; ho
felt a momentary instinct to tear his pearls off her, and bid her bo
free ; then the persqnal loveliness of her awoke too fiercely that
mere appetite which is all that most men and many women know
of love ; and his hands clenched close on hers in the slow figure of
the dance.

A stronger admiration than he had ever felt for her rose in him,
too. He knew the bitterness and the revolt that were in licr, yet
he saw her serene, cold, mistress of herself. It was not the childliko
simplicity that he had once fancied that he loved her for, but it
was a courage he respected, a quality he imderstood. ** One might
send her to Siberia and she would change to ice ; she would not
bend,” he thought ; and the thought whetted his passion to new
fierceness and tenacity.

The ball was gorgeous ; the surprises were brilliant and novel ;
the gardens were illumined to the edge of the sea till the fishers out
in the starry night thought the shore was all on fire. The great
persons in whose honour it was, were gratified and amused — the
grace and grandeur of the scene were like old days of Versailles or
of Venice.

The child mo^ed amidst it, with the great pearls lying on her
throat and encircling her arms, and her eyes had a blind un-
conscious look in them like those of eyes that have recently lost
their sight, and are not yet used to the eternal darkness.

But she spoke simply and well, if seldom; she moved with
correct grace in the square dance; she made her perfect courtesy
with the eighteenth-century stateliness in it ; all men looked, and

MOTHS. 113

wondered, and praised her, and women with a sigh of envy.

Only sixteen ! " ^

Only sixteen ; and she might have said as the young emi^cror *
said, when he took his crown, “O.my youth, 0 my youth! farewell!*’

Once her mother had the imprudence to speak to her; she
whispered in her ear—

“ Are you not rewarded, love ? Are you not content ?

Vere looked at her.

“ I have paid your debt. Be satisfied.”

A great terror passed like a cold wind, over the little selfish,
cruel, foolish woman, and she trembled.

The next morning a message came to her from her old Northum-
brian home.

“ My house must always be open for my dead son’s child, and
mj protection, such as it is, will always be hers.”

It was signed Sarah Mull and Cantire.

Vero read it, sitting before her glass in the light of the full day,
whilst her woman undid the long ropes of pearls that were twisted
about her fair hair. Two slow tears ran down her cheeks and fell
on the rough paper of the telegram.

“ She loves me ! ” she thought, “ and what a foolish, fickle, sin-
ning creature I shall for ever seem to her 1 ”

Then, lest with a moment’s longer thought her firmness should
fail her, she wrote hack in answer; ** You are so good, and I am
grateful. But I see that it is best that I should marry as my mother
wished. Pray for me.”

Tlie message winged its way fleeter than a bird, over the grey
sea to where the northern ocean beat the black Northumbrian rocks ;
.and an old woman’s heart was broken with the last paug of a sad
old age.

A day or two later the house-party of Felicity broke up, and the
chateau by the Norman sea was left to its usual solitude. Lady
Stoat went to stay with her daughter, the Lady Birkenhead, who
was at Biarritz, and would go thence to half a dozen great French
and English houses. Prince Zouroff and his sister went to Tsarsko
Selo, as it was necessary for him to see his emperor, and Lady Lolly
took her daughter straight to Paris.

Paris in the commencement of autumn was a desert, but she had
a pretty apartment in the Avenue Josephine. The marriage was
fixed to take place, in November, and two months was not too much
lor all the preparations which she needed to make. Besides, Lady
l)olly preferred that her daughter should see as few persons as pos-
sible. What was she afraid of? — she scarcely knew. She was
vaguely afraid of everything. She was so used to breaking her
words that a child’s promise seemed to her a thing as slight as a
spider’s gossamer shining in the dew.

It was safest, she fancied, for Vere to see no one, and to a mcm-
♦ Franz Josef,

I

114

MOTES.

ber of the great world theP-o is no solitude so complete as a city out
of its season. So she shut Vere in her gilded, ant’ silvered, and over-
decorated, and over-filled, rooms in the Avenue Josephine, and kept
her there stifled and weary, like a woodland bird hung in a cage in
a boudoir; and never let the girl take a breath of air save, by her
side in her victoria out in the Bois in the still, close evenings. Vero
made no opposition to anything. When St. Agnes gave her young
body and her fair soul up to torment, did she think of the shape of
the executioner’s sword ?

Lady Dolly was at this time much worried too about her own
immediate afiairs. Jura was gone to India on a hunting and
shooting tour with two officers of his old regiment, and he had
written very briefly to say so to her, not mentioning any ]ieriod
for his return. He meant to break it all off, thought Lady Dolly,
with an irritated humiliation rankling in her. Two years before
she would have been Bidone infuriata ; but time tempers every-
thing, and there were always consolations. The young dandy who
had won the Grand Prix was devoted and amusing ; it could not
bo said that Jura had been cither of late. She had got used to him,
and she had not felt it necessary to bo always en heaute for him,
which was convenient. Besides, there were heaps of things he had
got into the way of doing for her, and he knew all her habits and
tastes; losing him was like losing a careful and familiar servant.
Still she was not inconsolable. He had grown boorish and stupid
in the last few months ; and, though ho knew thousands of her
secrets, ho was a gentleman — they were safe with him, as safe as
the letters she had written him.

But her vanity W'as wounded.

Just because of that child’s great grey eyes ! — ” she thought
angrily.

Classic Clytemnestra, when murdered by her son, makes a
grander figure ccrtainlj^ but she is not perhaps more dceifly wounde d
than fashionable Faustina, when eclipsed by her daughter.

“You look quite worn, poor pussy I ” said Lady Stoat tender!}',
as she met her one day in Paris. “ When you ought to be so incased,
and so proud !

Lady Stoat, who was very ingenious and very penetrating,
left no means untried by which to fathom the reasons of the sudden
change of Vere. Lady Stoat read characters- too well not to liiiow
that neither caprice nor malleability were the cause of it.

“ She has been coerced ; but how ? ” she thought ; and brought
her microscope of delicate investigation and shrewd observation to
bear upon the subject. But she could make nothing of it.

“ 1 do what my mother wishes,*' Vere answered her, and an-
swered her nothing more.

“If you keep your secrets as well when you are married,”
thought Lady Stoat, “you will be no little trouble to your hus-
band, my dear.”

MOTES.

116

Aloud, of course sLo said only — «

“ So rig] it, dariing, so very right. Your dear little mother has
]y,\l a great deal of worry in her life ; it is only just that she should
111 id full comijonsation in you.- And I am quite sure you will be
liappy, Vere. You are so clever and serious ; you will have a salon,
1 dare say, and get all the politicians about you. That will suit j’ou
better than frivolity, and give you an aim in society. Without an
aim, love, society is sadly like playing cards for counters. One
wants a lover to meet, a daughter to chaperone, a cause to advance,
a something beside the mere pleasure of showing oneself. You will
never have the lover, I am sure, and you cannot have the daughter
just yet ; so, if I were you, I would take the cause — it does not
matter what cause in the least — say England against lUissia or
Kussia against England; but throw yourself into it, and^it will
amuse you, and it will be a safeguard to you from the dangers that
beset every beautiful young wife in the world. It is a melaneholy
thing to confess, and a humiliating one, that all human beings are so
made that they never can go on playing only for counters ! "

And Lady Stoat, smiling her sweetest, went away from Vero
with more respect than she had ever felt before for feather-headed
little pussy, since pussy had been able to do a clover thing unaided,
and had a secret that her friend did not know.

Foolish pussy ! ” thought her friend Adine. “ Oh, foolish pussy,
to have a secret from me. And it takes such a* wise head ana such
a long head to have a secret ! It is as dangerous as a packet of
dynamite to most persons.’*

Aloud to Lady Dolly she said only—

“ So glad, dear love, oh, so glad ! I was quite sure with a little
reflection that the dear child would see the wisdom of the step wo
wished her to take. It is such an anxiety off your mind ; a girl with
you in the season would have harassed you terribly. Eeally I do
not know which is the more wearing : an heiress that one is afraid
every moment will be got at by some si)endthrift, or a dear little
penniless creature that one is afraid will never marry at all ; and,
with Vere’s peculiar manners and notions, it might have been very
diflic alt. Happily, Zouroff has only admired her lovely classic head,
and has never troubled himself about what is inside it. I think she
\vill bo an astonishment to him — rather. But, to be sure, after six
months in the world, she will change as they all do.”

"‘Vere will never change,” said Lady Dolly irritably, and with
a confused guilty little glance at her friend. “ Vere will be always
half an angel and half an imbecile as long as ever she lives.”

“ Imbeciles are popular people,” said Lady Stoat with a smile.
“ As for angels, no one cares for them much about modern houses,
except in terra cotta.”

“It is not you who should say so,^* returned Lady Dolly
tenderly.

“ Oh, my dear 1 ” answered her friend with a modest sigh of dc-

116

MOTES.

prcciiition. I have no jpretonsions — I am only a poor, weak, and
very imperfect creature. But one thing I may ^ 9 ally say of mysi‘lf,
and that is, that I honestly love young girls and do my best for
them ; and I think not a few have owed their life’s happiness to
me. May your Vere be of the number ! ”

** I don’t think she will ever bo happy,” said Lady Dolly im-
patiently, with a little confused look of guilt, “ She doesn’t care
a bit about dress.”

That is a terrible lacune certainly,” assented Lady Stoat \Yitli
a smile. “ Perhaps, instead, she will take to politics — those serious
girls often do — or perhaps she will care about her children.”

Lady Dolly gave a little shudder. What was her danglitcr but
a child? It seemed only the other day that the little fair baby had
tumbled about among the daisies on the vicarage lawn, and poor
dead Yero in his mellow gentle voice had recited, as he looked at
her, the glorious lines to Ins child of Coleridge. How wretched she
had been then 1 — how impatient of the straitened means, t})[o narrow
purse, the country home, the calm religious life ! How wretched
she would have been now could she have gone back to it! Yet,
with the contradiction of her sex and character. Lady Dolly for a
moment wished with all her soul that she had never left that
narrow home, and that the child were now among the daisies.

One day, when they were driving down the Avcuiuo Marigny,
her mother pointed out to Vere a row of lofty windows ati jprcniicr,
with their shutters shut, but with gorgeous autumn flowers hang-
ing over their gilded balconies; the liveried suisse was yawning in
the doorway.

“ That is where your Faust-Domoo lives,” said Lady Dolly,
who could never bring herself to remember the proverb, let sleeping
dogs lie. “It is full of all kinds of beautiful things, and queer
ancient things too ; he is a connoisseur in his wayi and everybody
gives him such wonderful presents. He is making terrible scandal
just now with the young Grand-Duchess. Only to think of what you
risked that day boating with him makes one shudder 1 You might
have been compromised for life 1 ”

Vere’s proud mouth grew very scornful, hut she made no reply.

Her mother looked at her and saw the scorn.

“Oh, you don’t helievo me?” she said irritably; “ask any-
body! an hour or two alone with a man like that ruins a girl’s
name for ever. Of course it was morning, and open air, but still
Correze is one of those persons a' woman canH be seen with, even ! ”

Yere turned her head and looked back at the bright balconies
with their hanging flowers ; then she said with her teeth shut and
her lips turning white—

“ I do not speak to you of Prince ZourofTs character. Will you
be $0 good as not to speak to me of that of M. de Correze.”

Her mother was startled and subdued. She wished she had
not woke the sleeping dog.

MOTliS.

117

“If she be like that at sixteen what will she be at six and
twenty ? ” she thought. “ She puts them in opposition already ! ”

Nevertheless, she never again felt safe, and whenever she drove
along tlie Avenue Marigny she ‘looked up at the house with the
gilded balconies and hanging flowers to make sure that it gave no
sign of life.

It did not occur to her that whatever Vere might be at six and
twenty would bo the result of her own teaching, actions, and
example. Lady Dolly had reasoned with herself that she had done
right after all; she had secured a magnificent position for her
daughter, was it not the first duty of a mother ?

If Vere could not be content with that position, and all its
compensations, if she oflendod heaven and the world by any obsti-
nate passions or imprudent guilt, if she, in a word, with virtue
made so easy and so gilded, should not after all be virtuous, it
Avould bo the fault of Bulmer, the fault of society, the fault of
Zouroff, the fault of Correze, or of some other man, perhaps, — never
the fault of her motlier.

When gardeners plant and graft, they know very well what
will bo the issue of their work ; they do not expect the rose from a
bulb of garlic, or look for the fragrant olive from a slip of briar ;
but the culturevs of human nature are less wise, and they sow
poison, yet rave in reproaches when it breeds and brings forth its
like, “ The rosebud garden of girls ” is a favourite theme for poets,
and. the maiden, in her likeness to a half-opened blossom, is as near
purity and sweetness as a human creature can be, yet what does
the world do with its opening buds? — it thrusts them in the forcing
house amidst the ordure, and then, if they perish prematurely,
never blames itself. The streets absorb the girls of the poor;
society absorbs the daughters of the rich ; and not seldom ono form
of prostitution, like the other, keeps its captives “bound in the
dungeon of their own corruption.”

CHAPTER X.

It was snowing in Vienna. Snow lay heavy on all the plains aitd
roads around, and the Danube was freezing fast.

^ “ It will bo barely colder in Moscow,” said Correze, with a
sniyer, as he threw his furs aly^ut him and left the opera-house
amidst the frantic cheers and adoring outcries of the crowd without,
after his last appearance in Borneo e QiuUetta, In the bitter
glittering frosty night a rain of hothouse flowers fell about him ;
lie hated to see them fall ; but his worshippers did not know that,
and would not have heeded it if they had. Roses and violets,
hyacinth and white lilac, dropped at his feet, lined his path and

113 MOTHa.

carpeted his carriage as it it were April in the south, instead of
November in Austria.

His hand had just been pressed by an emperor’s, a ring of
brilliants beyond price had just been slid on his finger by an
empress ; the haughtiest aristocracy of the world had caressed him
and flattered him and courted him; he was at the supreme height
of fame, and influence, and fashion, and genius ; yet, as ho felt the
roses and the lilies fall about him he said restlessly to himself—

“ When I am old and nobody heeds me, I shall look back to
this night, and such nights as this, as to a lost heaven ; why, in
heaven's name, cannot 1 enjoy it now ? **

But enjoyment is not to be gained by reflecting that to enjoy is
our duty, and neither the diamonds nor the roses did he care for,
nor did he care for the cheers of the multitude that stood out
under the chill brilliant skies for the chance of seeing him pass
down the streets. It is a rare and splendid royalty, too, that of a
great singer ; but he did not care for its crowns. The roses made
him think of a little hedge-rose gathered by a sweetbriar bush on a
cliff by a grey quiet sea.

With such odd caprices does Fate often smite genius.

He drove to the supper-table of a very great lady, beautiful as
the morning ; and he was the idol of the festivity which was in his
honour; and the ^wcot eyes of its mistress told him that no
audacity on his part would bo deemed presumption — yet it all left
liim careless and almost cold. She had learned Juliet’s part by
heart, but he had forgotten Komco’s — ^had left it behind him in the
opera-house with his old Venetian velvets and lace.

From that great lady’s, whom he left alone with a chill heart,
empty and aching, he went with his comrades to the ball of the
Elysium down in the subterranean vaults of the city, where again
and again in many winters ho had found contagion in the clastic
mirth and tho buoyant spirit of the clean-limbed, bright-eyed
children of the populace, dancing and whirling and leaping far
down under the streets to tho Styrian music. But it did not
amuse him this night ; nor did the dancers tempt him ; the whirl
and the glow and the noise and the mirth seemed to him tedious
and stupid.

“Decidedly that opera tires me,” he said to himself, and
thought that his weariness came from slaying Tybalt and himself
on the boards of the great theatre: He told his friends and adorers
with petulance to let him be still, ho wanted to sleep, and the dawn
^v*as very cold. He went homo to his gorgeous rooms in a gorgeous
hotel, and lit his cigar and felt tired. The chambers were strewn
with bouquets, wreaths, presents, notes ; and amidst the litter was
a great gold vase, a fresh gift from the emperor, with its two rUievt,
telling the two stories of Orpheus and of Amphion.

But Corr^ze did not look twice at it. He looked instead at a
French journal, which he had thrown on his chair when his servant

MOTES.

119

had roused him at seven that evening, saving that it was the hour
to drive to the thcjgrc. He had crushed the paper in his hand then
and thrown it down; he took it up now, and looked again in a
corner of it in which there was announced the approaching marriage
of Prince Zouroff.

“ To give her to that brute I " he murmured as he read it over
once more. “Mothers were better and kinder in the days of
Moloch!”

Then he crushed the journal up again, and flung it into the
wood'fire burning in the gilded tower of the stove.

It was not slaying Tybalt that had tired him that night,

“ What is the child to me ? ” ho said to himself as he threw
himself on his bed. “She never could have been anything, and
yet ”

Yet the scent of the hothouse bouquets and the forced flowers
seemed sickly to him ; ho remembered the smell of the little rose
plucked from the sweetbriar hedge on the cliff above the sea.

The following noon he left Vienna for Moscow, where he had
an engagement for twenty nights previous to his engagement at
8t. Petersburg for the first weeks of the Pussian New Year.

From Moscow ho wrote to Lady Dolly. When that letter
reached Lady Dolly it made her cry ; it gave her a crise dps nerfa.
When she read what he wrote she turned pale and shuddered a
little; but she burnt what he ^vrote; that was dll.

She shivered a little whenever she thought of the letter for
days and weeks afterwards ; but it changed her purpose in no way,
and she never for one moment thought of acting upon it.

“ I shall not answer him,” she said to herself. “ He will think
I have never had it, and I shall send him a faire part like anybody
else. He v/ill say nothing when the marriage is over. Absurd as
it is, CorrSzo is a gentleman ; I suppose that comes from his living
so much amongst us.”

Amongst the many gifts that were sent .to swell the magnifi-
cence of the Zouroff bridal, there was one that came anonymously,
and of which none knew the donor. It gave rise to many con-
jectures and much comment, for there was not even the name of the
jeweller that had made it. It was an opal necklace of exquisite
workmanship and great value, and, as its medallion, thero hung a
single rose diamond cut as a star ; beneath the star was a moth of
sapphire and pearls, and beneath the moth was a flame of rubies.
They were so hung that the moth now touched the star, now sank
to the flame. It needed no words with it for Vere to know whence
it came.

But she kept silence.

“ A strange jewel,” said Prince Zouroff, and his face grew dark :
he thought some meaning or some' memory came with it.

It was the only gift amidst them all that felt the kisses and
tears of Vere.

120

MOTHS.

“I must sink to the flkme! ” she thought, ^*and ho will never
know that the fault is not mine; he will never* know that I have
not forgotten the star 1 ”

But she only wept in secret.

All her life henceforth was to be one of silence and repression.
They are the sejpoUe vive in which society immures its martyrs.

Some grow to like their prison walls, and to prefer them to light
and freedom : others loathe them in anguish till death come.

The gift of that strange medallion annoyed ZourolF, because it
perplexed him. He never spoke to Vcre concerning it, for he
believed that no woman ever told the truth ; but ho tried to dis-
cover the donor by means of his many servants and agents. He
failed, not because Oorr^zo had taken any especial means to ensure
sccrcsy., but from simple accident.

Corr^ze had bought the stones himself of a Persian merchant
many years before, had drawn the design himself, and had given it
to a young worker in gems of Galicia whom he had once befriended
at the fair of Novgorod ; and the work was only complete in all its
beauty and sent to him when the Galician died of that terrible
form of typhus which is like a plague in Russia. Therefore
ZourofTs inquiries in Paris were all futile, and he gradually ceased
to think about the jewel.

Another thing came to her at that time that hurt her, as the
knife hurt Iphigenia*. It was when the crabbed clear handwriting
she knew so well brought her from Bulraer Chase a bitter letter,

“ You are jmur mother’s child, I see,” wrote the harsh old
woman, who had yet loved her so tenderly, “ You are foolish, and
fickle, and vain, and won over to the world, like her. You have
nothing of my dead boy in you, or you would not sell yourself to
the first rich man that asks. Do not write to me ; do not expect
to hear from me ; you are for me as if you had never lived ; and if,
in your miserable marriage, you ever come to lose name and fame
— as you may do, for loveless marriages are an affront to heaven,
and mostly end in further sin — ^remember that you ask nothing at
my hands. At your cry I was ready to open my hand to you and
my heart, but I will never do so now, let you want it as you may.
I pity yon, and I despise you ; for when you give yourself to a
man whom you cannot honour or love, you are no better than tho
shameless women that a few weeks ago I would no more have
named to you thau I would have struck you a buffet on your cheek.”

Vere read the letter with the hot brazen glow of the Paris sun
streaming through the rose silk of the blinds upon her, and each
word stood out before her as if it were on fire, and her check grew
scarlet as if a blow were struck on it.

“She is right 1 Oh, how right 1” she thought, in a sort of
agony. “ And I cannot tell her the truth ! I must never tell her
the truth I ”

Sin and shame, and all the horror of base passions had been

MOTES.

121

things as unintelligible to her, as unknown, as the vile, miserable,
frail women that m, few roods off her in this city were raving and
yelling in the wards of Ste. Pelagie. And now, all in a moment,
they seemed to have entered lier life, to swarm about her, to become
part and parcel of her — and from no fault of hers.

“0 mother, spare me! Let me take back my word!” she
cried, unconsciously, as she started to her feet with a stab of awful
pain in her heart that frightened her ; it felt like death.

But in the rose-bright room all around her was silence.

Her grandmother’s letter lay at her feet, and a ray of the sun
shone on the words that compared her to the hapless creatures
whose very shame she even yet did not comprehend.

The door unclosed and Lady Dolly came in ; very voluble, in-
different to suffering or humiliation, not believing, indeed, that she
ever caused either.

Living with her daughter, and finding that no reproach or re-
crimination escaped Vere against her, Lady Dolly had begun to
grow herself again. She was at times very nervous with Vere, and*
never, if she could help it, met her eyes, but she was successful,
she was contented, she was triumphant, and the sense of shame
that haunted her was thrust far into the background. All the
vulgar triumphs of the alliance were sweet to her, and she did her
best to forget its heavy cost. Women of her calibre soon forgot ;
the only effort they have ever to make is, ofi the contrary, to re-
member. Lady Dolly had earnestly tried to forget, and had almost
thoroughly succeeded.

She came now into the room, a pretty pearl grey figure ; fresh
from lengthened and close council with famous tailors.

“Vera, my sweet Vera, your sables arc come; such sables!
Nobody’s except the grand-duchesses’ will equal them. And he
has sent bags of turquoises with them, literally sacks, as if they
were oats or green peas ! You will have all your toilette things set
with them, and your inkstands, and all that. Won’t you? And
they are very pretty, you know, set flat, very thick, in broad
bands ; very broad bands for the waist and the throat ; but myself,
I prefer—— Who’s been writing to you ? Oh, the old woman
from Bulmer. I suppose she is very angry, and writes a great deal
of nonsense. She was always horrid. The only thing she gave
me when I married poor Vere was a black Bible. I wonder what
she will send to you ? Another black Bible, perhaps. I believe
she gets Bibles cheap because she subscribes to the men that go out
to read Leviticus and Deuteronomy to the negro babies I ”

Vere bent and raised the letter in silence. The burning colour
had gone from her cheeks ; she tore the letter up into many small
pie^s and let them float out into the golden dust of the sunlight
word had been given, and she was its slave.

^ She looked at her mother, whom she had never called mother
since that last night at the chittcau of Abbaye aux Bois.

122

MOTES.

“ Will you, if you please?; spare me all those details ? she said,
simply. “ Arrange everything as you like best, it will satisfy me.
But let me hear nothing about it. That is all.”

“You strange, dear creature 1 Any other girl ” began

Lady Dolly, with a smile that was distorted, and eyes that looked
away.

“ I am not as other girls are. I hope there is no other girl in
all the world like me.”

Her mother made no answer.

Through the stillness of the chambers there came the sounds of
Paris, the vague, confused, loud murmur of traffic and music, and
pleasure and pain ; the sounds of the world, the world to which
Vere was sold.

The ^ words of the old recluse of Bulmer were very severe, but
they were very true, and it was because of tlicir truth that they
seared the delicate nerves of the girl like a hot iron. She did not
well know what shame was, but she felt that her own marriage
was shame ; and as she rolled home from the Bois de Boulogne that
night through the bright streets- of Paris, past the Hotel Zouroff
that was to be her iDrison-house, she looked at the girls of the
populace who were hurrying homeward from their workshops —
liower-makers, glove-makers, clcar-starchers, teachers of children,
workers iu factories — and she envied them, and followed them in
fancy to their humble hrvmcs, and thought to herself: “How
happy I would be to work, ^f only I had a mother that loved me,
a mother that was honest and good ! ”

The very touch of her mother’s hand, the very sound of her
laugh, and sight of her smile, hurt her ; she had known nothing
about the follies and vices of the world, until suddenly, in one
moment, she had seen them all incarnated in her mother, whose
pretty graces and gaieties became terrible to her for over, as the
pink and white loveliness of a woman becomes to the eyes that
have seen in its veiled hreast a cancer.

Vere had seen the moral cancer. And she could not forget it,
never could she forget it.

“ When she was once beloved by my father ! ” she thought ;

and she let her Bible lie unopened, lest, turning its leaves, she should
see the old divine imprecations, the old bitter laws that were in it
against such women as this woman, her mother, was.

One day in November her betrothed husband arrived from
Russia. The magnificence of his gifts to her was the theme ol
Paris. The girl was passive and silent always.

When he kissed her hands only she trembled from head to foot.

“ Are you afraid of me ? ” he murmured.

“ No ; I am not afraid.”

She could not tell him that she felt disgust — disgust so great,
BO terrible, that she could have sprung from the balcony and dashed
herself to death upon the stones.

MOTHS.

123

‘‘ Cannot you 'say that you like n .0 ever so little now ? " he
persisted, thinking that all his generosity might have borne some
iruit.

“ No — I cannot.”

Ho laughed grimly and bitterly.

“ And yet I dare take you, even as you are, you beautiful cold
child 1”

“ I cannot tell you a falsehood.”

Will you never tell me one ? ”

‘‘No; never,”

“ I do not believe you; every woman lies.”

Vcrc did not answer in words, but her eyes shone for a moment
with a scorn so noble that Sergius Zouroff bent his head before
her.

“ I beg your pardon,” he said ; “ I think you will not lie. But
then, you are not a maiden only ; you are a young saint.”

Vere stood aloof from him. ^Jlic sunshine shone on her fair
head and the long, straight folds of her white dress ; her hands
wore clasped in front of her, and the sadness in her face gave it
greater gravity and beauty.

“ I am a beast to hold her to her word ! ” he thought ; but the
beast in him was stronger than aught else and conquered him, and
made him ruthless to her.

She was looking away from him into the* blue sky. She was
thinking of the words, “ keep yourself unspotted from the world.”
She was thinking that she would be always true to this man whom
she loathed ; always true ; that was his right.

“ And perhaps God will lot me die soon,” she thought, with her
childish fancy that God was near and Death an angel.

Sergo Zouroff looked at her, hesitated, bowed low, and left the
room.

“ I am not fit for her ; no fitter than the sewer of the street for
a pearl ! ” he thought, and he felt ashamed..

Yet he went to his usual companions and spent the night in
drink and play, and saw the sun rise with hot red eyes ; he could
not change because she was a saint.

Only a generation or two back his forefathers had bought beau-
tiful Persian women by heaping up the scales of barter with strings
of pearls and sequins, and had borne off Circassian slaves in forays
with simple payment of a lance left in the lifeless breasts of the
men who had owned them ; his wooing was of the same rude sort.
Only being a man of the world, and his ravishing being legalised
by society, he went to the great shops of Paris for his gems, and
employ^ed great notaries to mite down the terms of barter.

The shrinking coldness, the undisguised aversion of his be-
trothed, only whetted his passion to quicker ardour, as the shrieks
of the Circassian captives, or the quivering limbs of the Persian
slaves, had done that of his forefathers in Ukraine ; and besides,

124 MOTES.

after all, he thought, she h^ed chosen to ^ve herself, hating him,
for,sake of what he was and of all he could giv«. After all, her
mother could not have driven her so far unless ambition had made
her in a manner malleable.

Zouroff, in whose mind all women were alike, had almost been
brought to believe in the honesty and steadfastness of the girl to
whom he had given Loris, and he was at times disposed to be
bitterly enraged against her because she had fallen in his sight by
lier abrupt submission; she seemed at heart no better than the
rest. She abhorred him ; yet she accepted him. No mere obe-
dience could account for that acceptance without some weakness
or some cupidity of nature. It hardened him against her ; it spoilt
her lovely, pure childhood in his eyes ; it made her shudder from
him seeip half hypocrisy. After all, he said to himself, where was
she so very much higher than Casse-une-Crohte ? It was only the
price that was altered.

When she came to know what Cassc-une-Crohte was, she said
the same thing to herself.

“ Do you believe in wicked people, miladi ?” he said the next
evening to Lady Dolly, as they sat together in a box at the
Bouffes.

“Wicked people? Oh dear, no — at least — yes,” said Lady
Dolly vaguely. “Yes, I suppose I do. I am afraid one must.
One secs dreadful things in the papers ; in society everybody is
very much like everybody else — no ? ”

Zouroff laughed ; the little, short, hard laugh that was charac-
teristic of him.

“ I think one need not go to the papers. I thinlc you and 1 are
both doing evil enough to satisfy the devil — if a devil there be.
But, if you do not mind it, I need not.”

Lady Dolly was startled, then smiled.

“ What droll things you say ! And do not talk so of the .

It doesn't sound well. Jt’s an old-fashioned belief, I know, and not
probable, they say, now, but still — one never can tell ”

And Lady Dolly, quite satisfied with herself, laughed her last
laugh at the fun of the Belle Helene, and had her cloak folded
round her, and went out on the arm of her future son-in-law.

Such few great ladies as were already in Paris, passing through
from the channel coast to the Riviera, or from one chateau to
another, all envied her, she knew; and if anybody had ever said
anything that was— that was not quite nice — nobody could say
anything now when in another fortnight her daughter would be
Princess Zouroff,

^ “ Really, I never fancied at all I was clever, but I begin to
think that I am,” she said in her self-complacency to herself.

The idea that she could be wicked seemed quite preposterous to
her when she thought it over. “ Harmless little me ! ” she said to
herself. True, she had felt wicked when she had met her daughter’s

MOTHS.

125

©ye, but that wrfs nonsense; the qa^lm liad always gone away
when she had taljen her chami»agne at dinner or her ether in her
bedroom.

A fortnight later the marriage of the head of the house of
Zouroff was solemnised at the chapel of the English Embassy and
the Russian church in Paris.

^Nothing was forgotten that could add to the splendour and
pomp of the long ceremonies and sacraments ; all that was greatest
in the great world was assembled in honour of the event. The
gifts were magnificent, and the extravagance unbridled. The story
of the corhcille read like a milliner’s dream of heaven ; the jewels
given by the bridegroom were estimated at a money value of
millions of roubles, and with them were given the title-deeds of a
French estate called Fclicitd, a free gift of love above and outside
all the superb donations contained in the settlements. All these
things and many more were set forth at length in all the journals of
society, and the marriage was one of the great events of the closing
year. The only details that the papers did not chronicle were that
when the mother, with her tender eyes moist with tears, kissed her
tlaughter, the daughter ^jut her aside without an answering caress,
and that when the last words of the sacrament were spoken, she,
who had now become the Princess Zourofl', fell forward on the altar
in a dead swoon, from which for some time she could not be
awakened. •

“ So they have thrown an English maiden to our Tartar minotaur !
Oh, what chaste people they arc, those English I ” said a Russian
Ooloncl of the Guard to Correze, as their sledge flew over the snow
on the Newski Prospect.

Corriize gave a shudder of disgust ; he said nothing.

Critics in music at the o])cra-house that night declared then,
and long after, that for the first time in all his career ho was guilty
of more than one artistic error as he sang in the great part of John
of Leyden.

When the opera w’as over, and he sat *at a supper, in a room
filled with hothouse flowers and lovely ladies, while the breath
•froze on tlie beards of the sentinels on guard in the white still night
Avithout, Correze heard little of the laughter, saw little of the
beauty round him. He Avas thinking all tlie while—

“The heaviest sorrow of my life will always be, not to liaA^o
saved that child from her motber.”

126

MOTES.

CHAPTER XI.

Between the Gulf of Villafranca and that of Eza there was a white
shining sunlit house, with gardens that were in the dreariest month
of the year rich and red with roses, golden with orange .fruit, and
made stately by palms of long growth, through whose stems the
blue sea shone. To these gardens there was a long terrace of white
marble stretching along the edge of the cliff, with the waves beatirg
far down below ; to the terrace there were marble seats and marble
steps, and copies of the Loves and Fauns of the Vatican and of the
Capitol, with the glow of geraniums flamelike about their feet.

Up and down the length of this stately place a woman moved
with a step that was slow and weary, and yet very restless ; the
step of a thing that is chained. The woman was very young, and
very pale ; her skirts of olive velvet swept the white stone ; her
fair hair was coiled loosely with a golden arrow ‘run through it;
round her throat there were strings of pearls, the jewels of morn-
ing. All women envied her the riches of which those pearls were
emblem. She was Vera, Princess Zouroff.

Vera always, now.

She moved up and down, up and down, fatiguing herself, and
unconscious of fiitigue ; the sunny world was quiet about her ; the
greyhound paced beside her, keeping step with hers. She was
alone, and there was no one to look upon her face and see its pain,
its weariness, its disgust.

Only a week ago, she thought ; only a week since she had fallen
in a swoon at the altar of the Russian church; only a week since
she had been the girl Vere Herbert. Only a week ! — and it seemed
to her that thousands of years had come and gone, parting her by
ages from that old sweet season of ignorance, of innocence, of peace,
of youth.

She was only sixteen still, but she was no more young. Her
girlhood had been killed in her as a spring blossom is crushed by a
rough hot hand that, meaning to caress it, kills it.

A great disgust filled her, and seemed to suffocate her with its
loathing and its shame. Everything else in her seemed dead,
except that one bitter sense of intolerable revulsion. All the re-
volted pride in her was like a living thing buried under a weight of
sand, and speechless, but aghast and burning.

** How could she ? how could she ? ” she thought every hour of
the day ; and the crime of her mother against her seemed the vilest
the earth could hold.

She herself had not known what she had done when she had
cons’ented to give herself in mairiage, but her mother had known.

She did not reason now. She only felt.

An unutterable depression and repugnance weighed on her ahvays ;
Bh0 felt ashai'ved of the sun when it rose, of her own eyes when they

MOTHS.

127

looked at her froi:d the mirror. To hcrtlelf t»ho seemed fallen so low^
sunk to such de^p degradation, that the basest of creatures would
have had full right to strike her cheek, and spit in her face, and call
her sister.

Poets in all time have poured out their pity on the woman wh.o
wakes to a loveless dishonour : what can the few words of a priest,
or the envy of a world, do to lighten that shame to sacrificed inno-
cence ? — nothing.

Her life had changed as suddenly as a flower changes when the
hot sirocco blows over it, and fills it with sand instead of de^v^
Nothing could help her. Nothing could undo what had been done.
Nothing could make her ever more the clear-eyed, fair-soulcd child
that had not even known the meaning of any shame.

“ God himself could not help me 1 ” she thought with, a bitter-
ness of resignation that was more hopeless than that of the martyrs
of old ; and she paced up and down the marble road of the terrace,
wondering how long her life would last like this.

All the magnificence that surrounded her was hateful ; all the
gifts that were neaped on her were like insult ; all the congratula-
tions that were poured out on her were like the mockeries of apes,
like the crackling of dead leaves. In her own sight, and without
sin of her own, she had become vile.

. And it was only a week ago !

Society would have laughed.

Society bad set its seal of approval upon this union, and ui)on
all such unions, and so doomed them sanctified. Year after year,
one on another, the pretty, rosy, goldcn-curlcd daughters of fair
mothers were carefully tended and cultured and reared up to graco
the proud races from wliich they sjirang, and were brought out
into the great world in their first bloom like half-opened roses,
with no other end or aim set before them as the one ambition
of their lives than to make such a marriage as this. Whosoever
achieved such was blessed.

Pollution ? Prostitution ? Society would have closed its ears
to such words, knowing nothing of such things, not choosing to
know anything.

Shame ? What shame could there be when ho was her husband ?
Strange fanciful exaggeration !— society would have stared and
smiled.

The grim old woman who studied her Bible on the iron-bound
Northumbrian shores ; the frivolous, dreamy, fantastic singer, wlio
had played the part of Pomeo till all life seemed to him a rose-
garden, moonlit and made for serenades ; these two might pefha])3
think with her, and understand this intense revolt, this passioiialo
repugnance, this ceaseless sense of unendurable, indelible reproach.
But those were all. Society wbuld have given her no sympathy.
Society would have simpered and sneered. To marry well ; that
was the first duty of a woman.

128

MOTES.

She had fulfilled it; she had been fortunate; how could she
fail to bo content ? ,

A lieavy step trod the marble terrace, and a heavy shadow fell
across the sunlight ; her husband approached her.

You are out without any shade ; you will spoil your skin,” he
said, as his eyes fell gloomily on her, for he noticed the shudder
that passed over her as he drew near.

She moved without sj^ieaking, where no sun fell, where the arm-
less Cni)id of the Vatican, copied in marble, stood amongst the roses
of a hundred leaves.

“ How pale you are ! That gown is too heavy for you. Do you
like this place ? ”

“ 1 ?”

She said the word with an unconscious sound in it, that had
the wonder of despair ; despair which asked what was there left in
all the world to like or love ?

“Do you like it, I say?” he repeated. “Most women rave
about it. You seem as ii' it were a prison-liousc. Will you be
always like that ? ”

“The place is beautiful,” she said in a low tone. “Have 1
xjom plained V ”

“Ko; you never complain. That is what annoys me. ]f you
ever fretted like other women — hut you arc as mute as that marble
ai'inless thing. Sometimes you make me afraid — afraid — that i
shall forget myself, and strike you.”

She was silent.

“Would that you did strike sooner than embrace me!” she
thought; and he read the unuttcred thought in her eyes.

“ 1 do love you,” he said sullenly, with some emotion. “ You
must know that ; 1 have left no means untried to show it you.”

“You have been very generous, monsieur 1 ”

“Monsieur! always monsieur! — it is ridiculous. I am your
husbarifl, and you must give me some tenderer word than that.
After all, why cannot you be hapjy ? You have all you want or
wish for, and if you have a wish siill unfultilled, be it the maddest
or most impossible, it shall he gratified if gold can do it, for 1 love
you — you frozen child ! ”

He bent his lips to hers; she shuddered, and was still.

He kept liis hand about her throat, and gathered one of the
roses of a hundred leaves, and set it against the pearls and her
white skin ; then he flung it away into the sea rouglily.

“Roses do not become you; you are not a htlle jardiniere;
you are a statue. This place is dull, one tires of it ; we will go to
Russia.”

“ As you please.”

“ As 1 please ! Will you say nothing else all your life ? There
is no pfeasure in doing what one pleases unless there is some
opposition to the doing it. If you would say you hated snow and

MOTHS.

120

ico, now, I would Swear to you that sn ')w and ice were paradise
beside these sickly^ palms and tawdry flowers. Is there nothing
you like ? Who sent you that strange necklace of the moth ? ”

I do not know.”

** But you imagine ? ”

She was silent.

** What is the meaning of it?”

I think the meaning is that one may rise to great ends, or
sink to base ones.”

“ Has it no love-token, then : no message ? ”

« Ho.”

The red colour rose over her pale face, but she looked at him
with unflinching gaze. He was but half satisfied.

“And do you mean to rise or sink?” he said, in a tone of
banter. “ Pray tell me.”

“ I have sunk.”

• The words stung him, and his pride, which was arrogant and
vain, smarted under them.

“ By God ! ” he said with his short hard laugh. “ Did it never
occur to you, my beautiful Vera, that you would do wiser not to
insult me if you want to enjoy your life? I am your master, and
I can be a bad master.”

She looked at him without flinching, very coldly, very wearily.

“Why will you ask me questions? The truth displeases you,
and I will not tell you other than the truth, I meant no insult—
unless it were to insult myself.”

He was silent. He walked to and fro awhile, pulling the roses
from their stems and flinging them into the gulf below. Then he
spoke abruptly, changing the subject.

“ We will go to llnssia. You shall see a hall in the Salle des
Palmiers. The world is best. Solitude is sweet for lovers, but not
when one of them is a statue — or an angel. Besides, that sort of
thing never lasts a week. The world is best. You would make
me hate you — or adore you — if we stayed on alone, and I wish to
do neither. If you were not my wife it might be worth while ; but
as it is ”

He threw another rose into the sea, as if in a metaphor of in-
difference.

“ Come to breakfast,” he said carelessly. “ We will leave for
ll#sia to-night.”

As they passed down the terrace and entered the house, she
moved wearily beside him with her face averted and her lips very
pale.

The Salle des Palmiers had no charm for her. She was think-
ing of the nightingale that was then singing in the Bussian snows.

If she saw Corr^ze what couM she say ? The truth she could
not tell him, and he must be left to think the moth had dropped
into the earthly fires of venal ambitions and of base desires.

K

jrdSMS

•ttedd ym ®ot teave iae kre?* she «a$jd n&t&iJy and « iittb
&!Qi&ly fts sat at tike keakiast-table.

He answered witb bis cnrt and caustic ku^.

“ I thank you for the compliment ! No, my dear, one does not
go through all the weariness and folly of marriage ceremonies to
mave the loveliness one has purchased so hardly in a week! Have
patience I I shall be tired of you soon, maybe. But not xmtil you
nave shown your diamonds at an Imperial ball. Do not get too
pale. The court will rally mo upon my tyranny. You are too
pale. A touch of your mother’s rouge will be advisable unless you
get some colour of your own.”

Vere was silent.

Her throat seemed to contract and choke her. She set her
glass 4 ov»ti untouched.

This was her master !— this man who would tire of her soon,
and hade her rouge whilst she was yet sixteen years old !

Yet his tyranny was less horrible to her than his tenderness.

That night they left for Russia.

A few days later the gossip of St. Petersburg, in court and cafe,
talked only of two things — ^the approaching arrival of the new
beauty. Princess Zouroff, with the opening of the long-closed
Zourolf Palace on the Nowski Prospect; and of the immense
penalty paid in forfeit by the great tenor, Corr^ze, to escape the
last twenty nights bf his engagement in that city.

I had bettor forfeit half my engagement than lose my voice
altogether,” said Correze impatiently, in explanation. ^'The
thousands of francs I can soon make again ; but if the mechanical
nightingale in niy throat give way — I must go and break stones
for ray broad. No! in this atmosphere I can breathe no longer,
I pay — and I go to the south.”

He paid and went ; and St. Petersburg was half consoled for his
departure by the entry on the following day of Prince Zourolf, and
of her whom all the tyotM called now, and would call henceforward,
Princess Vera.

CHAPTER Xn.

Agai^ in the month of November, exactly -one year after her
marriage, a tall slender figure clothed in white, with white furs,
moved to and fro very wearily under the palms of the Villa
N^aguine on the Gulf of Villafraaica, and her sister-in-law, looking
wistfully at her, thought—

** I hope he is not cruel — >1 hope not. Perhaps it is only the
•death of the child that has saddened her.”

Veai md her thou^^s and looked her in the eyes.

MOTIM

m

^ I am glad thdt tftiB ebild died,** sbo aaM simply.

The Princess Jf<Slaguine shuddered a little.

•‘ Oh, my dear,” she murmured, that caimot be. Do mt say
that ; women find solace in their children when they aiue unhappy
in all else. You have a tender fond heart, jw would have ”

“ I think my heart is a stone,” said the girl in a low voice ;
then she added: “In the poem of ‘Aurora Leigh' the woman
loves the child that is born of her ruin ; I am not like that. Per-
haps I am wicked ; can you understand ? ”

“Yes, yes; 1 understand,” said the Princess Kelaguine
hurriedly, and, though she was accounted in her generation a false
and heartless little woman of the world, her eyes became dim and
her hands pressed Vere's with a genuine pity. Long, long years
before Nadine Zouroff had herself been given to a loveless i]^rriage,
when all her life seemed to her to be lying dead in a soldier’s un-
marked grave in the mountains of Caucasus.

“That feeling will change, though, be assured,” she said
soothingly. “ When we are very young all our sorrow is despair ;
but it docs not kill us, and we live to be consoled. Once I felt
like you — yes — but now I have many interests, many ties, many
occupations, and my sons and daughters are dear to mo, though
they were not kis ; so will be yours, to you, in time."

Vere shuddemd.

“People are different,” she said simply; “*to me it will always
•be the same,”

She pulled a cluster of white roses, and rulHed them in her
hands, and threw them down, almost cruelly.

“Will those roses bloom again?” she said. “What I did to
them your brother has done to me. It cannot be altered now,
iTorget that I have said anything; I will not again,"

One year had gone by since Vere had been given, with the
blessing of her mother and the benison of society, to the Minotaur
of a loveless marriage. To herself she soenjed so utterly changed
that nothing of her old self was left in her, body or soul. To the
world she only seemed to have grown lovelier, as was natural with
maturer womanhood, and to have become a great lady in lieu of a
graceful child.

She was little more than seventeen new, but, herself, she Mt as
if centuries had rolled over her head.

After her winter at the Imperial Court, she had been so changed
that she would at times Wonder if she had ever been the glad and
thoughtful child who had watched the North Sea hseak itself in
foam in the red twilight of Northumbrian dawns.

She had a horror of herself.

She had a horror of the world.

But from the world and from herse¥ there wa» th>w no csoape.

Bhe was the Princess Zouroff.

An immense disgust possessed her, and pervaded all her lifei

132 MOTHS.

falling on her as the thick grey fog falls on a sunny landscape —
heavy, dull, and nauseous.

The loveliest and youngest beauty in the Salle des Palmiers,
with the stars of her diamonds shining on her like the planets of a
summer night, she was the saddest of all earthly creatures.

I’he girl who had gone to bed with the sun and risen with it ;
who had spent her tranquil days in study and open-air exercise ;
who had thought it pleasure enough to find the first primrose, and
triumj)h enough to write the three letters at the foot of a hard
problem ; who had gone by her grandmother’s side to the old dusky
church, where noble and simple had knelt together for a thousand
years, and who had known no more of the evil and lasciviousness
of the world at largo than the white ox-eye opening under the oak
glades \ the girl who had been Vere Herbert on those dark chill
Northumbrian shores was now the Princess Vera, and \vas for ever
in the glare, the unrest, the fever, and the splendour, of a great
society.

Night was turned into day ; pleasure, as the world construed it,
filled each hour ; life became a spectacle ; and she, as a part of the
spectacle, was ceaselessly adorned, arrayed, flattered, censured, and
posed — as a model is posed for the painter. All around her was
grand, gorgeous, restless, and insincere ; there was no leisure, though
there was endless ennui ; and no time for reflection, though there
were monotony and lx satiety of sensation. Sin she heard of for the
first time, and it was smiled at; vice became bare to her, but no
one shunned it ; the rapacity of an ignoble passion let loose and
called marriage ” tore down all her childish ignorance and threw
it to the winds, destroyed her self-respect and laughed at her,
trampled on all her modest shame, and ridiculed Jier innoccuce.

In early autumn she had given birth to a son, who had lived a
few hours, and then died. She had not sorrowed fur its loss — it
was the child of Sergius Zouvoff. She thought it better dead. She
liad felt a strange emotion as she had looked on its little body,
lying lifeless; but it was neither maternal love nor maternal regret;
it was rather remorse.

She had been then at Svir, on the shores of the Baltic, one of
the chief estates of the Princes of ZourolT, which all the summer
long had been the scene of festivities, barbaric in their pomp and
costliness ; festivities with w^hich her husband strove to while away
the year which Imperial command had bade him pass, after mar-
riage, on his hereditary lands.

“ Do not allow my mother to come to me ! ” she had said once with
a passionate cry when the birth of the child had drawn near. It
was the first time she had ever appealed in any way to her husband.
Ho laughed a little grimly, and his face flushed.

**Your mother shall not come,” ho said hastily. **Do you
suppose she would wish to he shut up in a sick room ? Perhapa
she might, though, it is true ; miladi always remembers what will

M0TH8. 133

look well. One must do her the justice to say she always rc-
nieinbers that, at toast. But no ; she shall not come.”

So it came to pass that her mother in her little octagon boudoir
in Chesham Place, lined with old fans of the Beau Sitcle, and draped
with Spanish lacic, could only weep a little with her bosom friends,
and murmur, “ My sweet child ! — such a trial ! — in this horrible
weather by the Baltic — so cruel of the Emperor — and to think my
healili will not let me go to her!’*

Zoiiroff, wlio passionately desired a legitimate son, because he
liatcd with a deadly hatred his next brother Vladimir, took the loss
of the male child to heart with a bitterness which was only wounded
pride and hafllcd enmity, but looked like tenderness beside the
marblc-like coldness and passive indifference of his wife.

Physicians, who always are too clever not to have a thousand
reasons for everything, alleged that the change of climate and
temperature had affected the health of the Princess Vera ; and her
husband, who hated Russia with all his might, urged this plea of
her health to obtain a reduction of the time ho had been ordered to
remain on liis own lands ; and obtaining what he wished from the
Tsar, returned in November to the French Riviera.

lie had purcliased the villa of his sister from her, although it
was called still tlic Villa Nclaguinc. He had bought it in a mood
of ca[)tious irritation with his wife, knowing ^that to Vere, reared
in the cold, grey days and under the cloudy skies, and by the
sombre seas of the dark north, the southern seaboard was opi)ressivc
in its langouv and its light. Sometimes he liked to hurt her in any
way he could ; if her child had lived he would have made it into a
whip of scorjuons for her. Yet he always lavished on her so much
money, and so many jewels, and kept her so perpetually in the front
of the greatest of great worlds, that everybody who knew him said
that ho made a good husband after all ; much better than any one
would have anticipated.

He intended to stay at the villa on the Mediterranean for three
months, and thither came, self-invited because she was so near —
only at Paris — the Lady Dolly.

Neither Zouroff nor his sister ever invited her to their houses,
hut pretty Lady Dolly was not a woman to be deterred by so mere
a trifle as that.

“ I pine to sec my sweet treasure 1 ” she wrote ; and Sergius
Zouroff, knitting his heavy brows, said “Let her come,” and Vere
said nothing.

“What an actress was lost in your mother! ” he added with his
rough laugh ; hut he confused tlie talent of the comedian of society
with that of the comedian of the stage, and they are very dissimilar.
The latter almost always forgets herself in her part; the former
never.

So one fine, sunlit, balmy day towards Christmas, Lady Dolly
drove up through the myrtle wood that led to the Villa Nelaguine.

m

MOTHS.

It was noonday. Tho* house guests were stVaying down from
upstairs to breakfast in the pretty Pompeiian room, with its inlaid
marble walls, and its fountains, and its sculpture, and its banks of
hothouse flowers, which opened on to the wlute terrace, that fronted
the rippling blue sea. On this terrace Zouroff was standing.

He saw the carriage approaching in the distance through the
myrtles.

** C*€st maclame ho said>, turning on his heel, and looking

into the breakfast chamber. He laughed a little grimly as he
said it.

Vere was conversing with Madame Nelaguinc, who saw a strange
look come into her eyes ; aversion, repugnance, contempt, pain, and
shame all commingled. “ What is there that I do not know ? **
thought the Princess Nadine. She remembered how Vera had not
returned her mother’s embrace at the marriage ceremony.

Sergius Zouroff was still watching the carriage’s approach, with
that hard smile upon his face which had all the brutality and cyui~
cism of his temper in it, and under which delicate women and
courageous men had often winced as under the lash.

“ 0*est madame mere** he said again, with a spray of gardenia
between his teeth ; and then, being a grand gentleman sometimes,
when the eyes of society were on him, though sometimes being
rough as a boor, ho straightened his loose heavy figure, put tlio
gardenia in his bution-holc, and went down the steps, with the
dignity of Louis Quatorze going to meet a Queen of Spain, and re-
ceived his guest as she alighted with punctilious politeness and
an exquisite courtesy.

Lady Dolly ascended the steps on his arm.

She was dressed perfectly for the occasion ; all a soft dove-huo,
with soft dove-coloured feather trimmings, and silvery furs witli a
knot of black here and there to heighten the chastened effect, and
show her grief for the child that had breathed but an hour. On
her belt hung many articles, but chief among them was a small
silver-bound prayer-book, and she had a largo silver cross at her
throat.

** She will finish with religion,” thought Zouroff ; “ they always '
take it last.”

Lady Dolly was seldom startled, and seldom nervous ; but, as
her daughter came forward on to the terrace to meet her, she was
both startled and nervous. ,

Vera was in a white morning dress with a white mantilla of old
•Spanish lace about her head and throat; she moved with serene and
rather languid grace ; her form had developed into the richness of
womanhood ; her face was very cold. Her mother could see nothing
left in this wonderfully beautiful and stately person of the child of
eighteen months before. «

**Is that Vere?” she cried involuntarily, as she looked upward
to the terrace above.

MQTBSi laa

That i» Yesaf ’ sadd Sergius Zouro^T drilj* All the difference
lay there.

Then Lady Dolly recovered herself.

“My sweet child! Ah the sorrow!-— the joy!” murmured
Lady Dolly, meeting her with flying feet and outstretched arms>
upon the white and black chequers of the marble terrace.

Vere stood passive, and let her cold cheeks be brushed by those
softly tinted lips. Her eyes met her mother’s once, and Lady Dolly
trembled.

“ Oh this terrible Use ! ” she cried,, with a shiver ; “ you can
have nothing worse in Russia! Ah, my dear, precious Vera! I
was so shocked, so grieved ! — to think that poor little angel was
lost to us ! ”

“We will not speak of that,” said Yere in a low voice, that was
very cold and weary. “ You are standing in the worst of the wind ;
will you not come into the house ? Yes ; I think one feels the cold
more here than in Russia. People say so.”

“ Yes ; because one has sunshades here^ and one sees those
ridiculous palms, and it ought to be warm if it isn’t,” answered
Lady Dolly ; but her laugh was nervous and her lips trembled and
contracted as she thus met her daughter once more.

“ She is so unnatural I ” she sighed to Princess Nelaguine j “ so
unnatural ! Not a word, even to me, of her poor dear little dead
child. Not a word ! It is really loo i>ainful.”*

The Princess Nelaguine answered drily : “ Your daughter is not
very happy. My brother is not an angeh But then, you knew
very well, chere madame, that he never was one.”

“ I am sure he seems very good,” said Lady Dolly piteously, and
with frctfulncss. She honestly thought it,

Vere had enormous jewels, constant amusement, and a bottom-
less purse ; the niiM^ of Lady Dolly was honestly impotent to
conceive any state dratistence more enviable than this.

“ To think what I am content with ! ” she thought to herself ;
she who had to worry her husband every timfe she wanted a cheque ;
who had more debts for dress and pretty trifles than she would pay
if she lived to he a hundred; and who constantly had to borrow
half-a-crown for a cup of tea at Hurlingham,or a rouleau of gold to
play with at Monaco.

Those were trials indeed !

“I hope* ’you realise that you are my mother-in-law,” said
Zouroff, as Lady Dolly sat on his right han^ amd he gave her some
grapes at breakfast.

Be laughed as he said it. Lady Dolly tried to laugh^ but did
not succeed.

“ You are bound to detest me,” she said with an exaggerated
little smile, “ by all precedents of .Action and of fact”

“ Oh no I ” said Zouroflf gallantly ; “ never in fiction or in fact
had any man so bewitching and youthful a mother-in-law. On my
life, you look no older Ihnn Ynn.”

136

MOTES.

“ Oli-li ! " said Lady Dpily, pleased but deprecatory. “ Vera is
in a grand style, you know. Women like her lo^k older than they
are at twenty, but at forty they look much youDger than they are.
That is the use of height and straight features, and Greek brows.
When one is a little doll, like me, one must be resigned to looking
insignificant always.

** Is the Venus de Medici insignificant ? she is very small,”
said Zouroff still most gallantly; and he added, in a lower key,
‘ You were always pretty, Dolly ; you always will be. I am
sorry to see that prayer-book ; it looks as if you felt growing
old, and you will be wretched if you once get that idea into your
head.”

” I feel young,” said Lady Dolly sentimentally. “ But it would
sound ridiculous to pretend to be so.”

Her glance went to the graceful and dignified presence of her
daughter.

“ Vere is very handsoine, veiy beautiful,” she continued hesitat-
ingly. “ But — but — surely she is not looking very well ? ”

“She is scarcely recovered,” said Zouroff roughly, and the speech
annoyed him. He knew that his young wife was unhappy, but he
did not choose for any one to jfity her, and for her mother, of all
people, to do so !

“ Ah I to be sure, no ! ” sighed Lady Dolly. “ It was so sad —
poor little angel 1 But did Vera care much ? I think not.”

I think there is nothing she cares for,” said Zouroff savagely.
“ Who could tell your daughter would be a piece of ice, a femme de
marhre f It is too droll.”

“ Pray do not call me Dolly,” she murmured piteously. “ People
will hear.”

“ Very well, madame mere I said Zouroff, and he laughed this
time aloud.

Slic was frightened — half at her own work, half at the change
wrought in Vere.

“ Who could tell shO would alter so soon?” she thought, in \vondcr
at the cold and proud woman who looked like a statue and moved
like a goddess.

“ To think she is only seventeen ! ” said Lady Dolly aloud, in
bewilderment.

“ To be married to me is a liberal education,” said her son-in-
law, with his short sardonic laugh. ’

“ I am sure you are very kind to her,” murmured poor little
Lady Dolly, yet feeling herself turn pale under her false bloom.
“ The beast ! ” she said to herself with a shudder. “ The Centaurs
must have been just like him.”

She meant the Satyrs.

“Sergius,” said Princess Nelaguine to her brother that night,
“ Vera does not look well.”

‘'No?” he answered carelessly, “She is always too pale. I

MOTHS.

137

tell her always to* rouge. If she do n^t rouge in Paris, she will
scarcely tell in a hjll, handsome though she is.*’

“ Rouge at sev&teen ! You cannot be serious. She only wants
to be — ^happy. I do not think you make her so. Bo you try ? **

He stared and yawned.

“ It is not my metier to make women happy. They can be so
if they like. I do not prevent them. She has ten thousand
Irancs a month by her settlements to spend on her caprices — if it is
not enough she can have more. You may tell her so. I never
refuse money.’*

“ You speak like a hourgeoiSy* said his sister, with some contempt.
“ Do you think that money is everything ? It is nothing to a girl
like that. She gives it all to the poor ; it is no pleasure to her.**

“ Then she is very unlike her mother,” said the Prince Zouroff
with a smile,

“ She is unlike her, indeed ! you should be thankful to think
how entirely unlike. Your honour will be safe with her as long as
she lives ; but to bo happy — she will want more than you give her
at present, but the want is not one that money will supply.**

“ She has been complaining ? ** said her brother, with a sudden
frown.

Madame Nelaguino added with a ready lie : “ Not a word ; not
a syllable. But one has eyes — and I do so wish you to bo kind
to her,”

“ Kind to her ? *’ he repeated, with some surprise, “ I am not
unkind that I know of ; she has impossible ideas ; they make mo
impatient. She must take me and the world as she finds us ; but
1 am certainly not unkind. One does not treat one’s wife like a
saint. Perhaps you can make her comprehend that. Were she
sensible, like others, she would be happy like them.”

He laughed, and rose and drank some absinthe.

IJis sister sighed and set her teeth angrily on the cigarette that
she was smoking.

Perhaps she will in time be happy and sensible like them,**
she said to herself ; “ and then your lessons will bear their proper
fruits, and you will be deceived like other husbands, and punished
as you merit. If it were not for the honour of the Zouroffs I should
X)ray for it ! ”

The Villa NcSlaguine was full of people staying therc^ and was
also but five miles distant from Monte Carlo.

Vere was never alone with her mother during the time that
Lady Dolly graced the Riviera with her presence, carried her red
umbrella under the palm-trees, aaid laid her borrowed napoleons on
the colour.

No word of reproach, no word of complaint, escaped her lips in
her mother’s ijresencc, yet Lady Dolly felt vaguely frightened, and
longed to escape from her presence, as a prisoner longs to escape
from the dock.

138

MOTES.

She atayed thia Decemiber weather at ViUafranc^. where Decem-
ber meant blue sea^ golden aunahine, and red^roses^ because she
thought it was the right thing to do. If there had been people
who had said — ^well, not quite nice things — it was better to stay
with her daughter immediately on the reiram from Russia. So she
did stay, and even had herself visited for a day or two by Mr. Van-
derdecken on one of his perpetual voyages from London to Java^
Japan, or Jupiter.

Her visit was politic and useful; but it cost her some pain,
some fretfulness, and some apprehension.

The house was full of pleasant people, for Zouroff never could
endure a day of even comparative solitude ; and amidst them was a
very handsome Italian noble, who was more agreeable to her than
the Due de Dinant had of late grown, and who was about to go to
England to be attached to the embassy there, and who had the
eyes of Othello with the manners of Chesterfield, and whom she
made her husband cordially invite to Chesham Place. She could
play as high as she liked, and she could drive over to Monaco when
she pleased, and no life suited her better than this life ; where sl*e
could, whenever she chose, saunter through the aloes and palms to
those magic halls where her favourite fever was always at its height,
yet where everything looked so pretty, and appearances were always
so well preserved, and she could say to everybody, “ They do have
such good music — one can’t help liking Monte Carlo 1 ”

The place suited her in every way, and yet she felt stifled in it,
and afraid.

Afraid of what ? There was nothing on earth to be afi-aid of,
she know that.

Yet, when she saw the cold, weary, listless life of Vere and met
the deep scorn of her eyes, and realised the absolute impotency of
rank, and riches, and pleasure, and all her own adored gods, to
console or even to pacify this young wounded soul, Lady Dolly was
vaguely frightened, as the frivolous are always frightened at any
strength or depth of nature, or any glimpse of sheer despair.

Not to be consoled !

What can seem more strange to the shallow ? What can seem '
more obstinate to the weak ? Not to be consoled is to offend all
swiftly forgetting humanity, most of whose memories are writ on
water.

“ It is very strange, she seems to one to enjoy nothing ! ** said
Lady Dolly, 6ne morning, to Madame Ndlaguine, when Prince Zou-
. roff had announced at the noon^y breakfast that he bad purchased
for his wife a famous histoyrical diamond known in Memoirs and in
European courts as the “ Roc’s egg,” and Vere, with a brief word of
thanks acknowledged the tidings, her mother thought indignantly,
as though he had brought her a twopenny bunch of primroses.

•|It is very strange 1” repeated Lady Dolly, **The idea of
hearing that she had got the biggest diamond in all the world, except

Moma. 13 ^

five, and receiving news like thatl Your brother looked dis-
appointed, I think,^aunoyed, — didn’t you?"

‘‘If he want ecstasies over a diamond he can give it to
Noisette,” said Madame Nelaguine, with her little cold smile.
“ I think ho ought not to be annoyed that his wife is superior to
Noisette..”

“ Was Yera always as cold as that at Bt Petersburg before her
child’s death ? ” pursued Lady Dolly, who never liked Madame
Nelaguine’s smiles.

“ Yes ; always the same.”

“ Doesn’t society amuse her in the least ? ”

“ Not in the least. -I quite understand why it does not do so.
Without coquetry or ambition it is impossible to enjoy society much.
10 very pretty woman should be a flirt, every clever woman a poli-
tician ; tile aim, the animus, the intrigue, the rivalry that accompany
each of those pursuits are the salt without which the great dinner
w’crc tasteless. A good many brainless creatures do, it is true, flutter
through society all their lives for the mere pleasure of fluttering ;
but that is poor work after all,” added Madame Nelaguine, ignoring
the pretty flutterer to whom she was speaking. “ One needs an aim,
just as an angler must have fish in the stream or he grows weary of
wliipping it. Now your Vera will never be a coquette because her
temperament forbids it. She is too proud, and also men have tho
misfortune not to interest her. And I think ^she will never bo a
politician; at least, she is interested in great questions, but the
small means by which men strive to accomplish their aims disgust
her, and she will never be a diplomatist. In the first week she was
in Russia she compromised Sergius seriously at the Imperial Court
by praising a Nihilist novelist to the Empress I ”

Oh, I know ! ” said Lady Dolly, desperately, “ She has not
two grains of sense. She is beautiful and distinguished-looking.
When you have said that you have said everything that is to be'
said. The education she had with her grandmother made her hope-
lessly stupid, actually stupid ! ”

“ She is very for from stupid, pardon me,” said Madame Ndla-
guine, with a delicate little smile. “ But she has not your happy
adaptability, chere madame. It is her misfortune.”

“ A misfortune, indeed,” smd Lady Dolly, a little sharply, feeling
that her superiority was being despised. It is always a misfortune
to be unnatural, and she is unnaturaL She takes no pleasure in
anything that delights every one else ; she hardly kno^s serge from
sicilienne; she has no tact because she does not think it worth
while to have any. She will offend a king as indifferently as she
will change her dress ; every kind of amusement bores her, she is
made like that. When everybody is laughing round her she looka
graven and stares like an owl with her great eyes. Oh, dear mo ; to
think she should be my daughter ! Nothing odder ever could be
than that Vera should be my child.”^

140

MOTHS.

“ Except ttiat stie sliogild be my brother’s wife/* said Madaino
Is^lanjniue, drily. Lady' Dolly was silent.

The next day Lady Dolly took advantage of ner liusband's escort
to leave the Villa N41agmno for England ; she went with reluctance,
yet with relief. She was envious of her daughter, and she w^as im-
patient with her, and, though she told herself again and again that
Veie’s destiny had fallen in a golden paradise, the east wind, that
•she hated, moaning through the palms seemed to send after Iicr
homeward a long-drawn dcsi>airing sigh — the sigh of a young life
ruinf'd.

I’lince Zourolf stayed on in the south, d(3tained there hy the
■seduction of the gaming-tables, until the Christmas season was
passed; then, having won very largely, as very rich men orien do,
he left the lUviera for his handsome hotel in the Avenue du Bois do
Boulogne ; and Madame Nelaguinc left it also.

Like many of their country people they were true children of
Paris, and were seldom thoroughly content unless they were within
sight of the dome of the Invalidcs.

lie felt he would breathe more freely when from the windows of
the railway carriage he should sec the zinc roofs and shining gilt
<3upolas of his one heaven upon earth.

“Another year with only her face to look at, with its eyes of
unending reproach, and I should have gone mad, or cut her throat,”
he said in a moment of confidence to one of his confidants and
parasites.

They had never been alone one day, indeed ; troops of gucftis
had always been about them ; but it had not been Paris, Paris with
its consolations, its charm, and its crowds.

In Paris he could forget completely that he had ever married,
save when it might please his pride to hear the world tell him that
he had the most beautiful \voman in Europe fur his wife.

“Can you not sleep? do not stare so with your great eyes !”
said Prince Zouroff angrily to his wife, as the night train riislicd
through the heart of France, and Vere gazed out over the snow-
whitened moonlit country, as the land and the sky seemed to lly
past her.

In another carriage behind her was her great jewel box, set
between two servants, whose whole duty was to guard it.

But she never thought of her jewels ; she was thinking of the
moth and the star ; she was thinking of the summer morning on
the white cliff of the sea. For she knew that Correzo was in Paris.

It was not any sort of love that moved her, beyond such linger-
ing charmed fancy as remained from those few hours’ fascination.
But a great reluctance to see him, a great fear of seeing him, was in
lier. What could he think of her marriage ! And she could never
taW him why she had married thus. He would think her sold like
the rest, and he must be left to think so.

The express train rushed on through the cold calm night. With

MOTHS . " m

every moment she drew nearer to him— f he man who had bidden
Ikt keep herself “ n|ispotted from the world.”

And what is my life,” she thought, except one long pollu-
tion ! ”

She leaned her white cheek and her fair head against tho
window, and gazed out at the dark flying masses of the clouds ; her
eyes were full of pain, wide opened, lustrous; and, waking suddenly
and seeing her thus opposite him, her husband called to her roughly
and irritably with an oath : “ Can you not sleep? ”

It seemed to her as if she never slept now. What served her
as sleep seemed but a troubled feverish dull trance, disturbed by
iiateful dreams.

It was seven o’clock on tho following evening when they
arrived in Paris. Their carriage was waiting, and she and Madame
iNclaguine drove homeward together, leaving Zouroff to 'follow
them. There was a faint light of an aurora borealis in the sky,
and the lamps of the streets were sparkling in millions ; tho
weather Avas very cold. Their coachman took his way past tho
opera-house. There were immense crowds and long lines of equi-
pages.

In large letters in the strong gaslight it was easy to read ui)on
the placards.

Faust . , • PoRRkzB.

The opera was about to commence.

Vere shrank back into +he depths of the carriage. Her com-
panion leaned forward and looked out into the night.

Paris is so fickle ; but there is one sovereign she never tires of
— it is Correze,” said Madame Ndlaguine, with a little laugh, and
Avoiidcrcd to see tho colourless cheek of her young sister-in-law
flush suddenly and then grow white again.

** Have you ever heard Corrdze sing ? ” she asked quickly. Vere
hesitated.

“Never in the opera. No.”

“ Ah ! to be sure, he left Russia suddenly last winter ; left as
you entered it,” said Madame Ndlaguino, musing, and with a quick
side-glance.

Vere was silent.

Tho carriage rolled on, and passed into tho courtyard of the
Hotel Zouroff between the gilded iron gates, at the instant when
the applause of Paris welcomed upon the stage of its opera its
public favourite.

The house was grand, gorgeous, brilliant ; adorned in the taste
of the Second Empire, to which it belonged ; glittering and over-
laden, superb yet meretricious. The lines of servants were bowing
low; tho gilded gaseliers were glowing with light, there were
masses of camellias and azaleas, beautiful and scentless, and heavy
odours of burnt pastilles on the heated air.

142

MOTES.

Vere passed up the "wCde staircase slowly, find the Jaraes of its
scarlet carpeting seemed like fire to iier tired ey'^s.

She changed her prison-house often, and each one had been
made more splendid than the last, but each in its turn was no less
a prison ; and its gilding made it but the more dreary and the
more oppressive to her.

“ You will excuse mo, I am tired,” she murmured to her sister-
in-law, who was to be her guest, and she went into her own hed-
chaniber and shut herself in, shutting out even her maid from her
solitude.

Through the curtained windows there came a low muffled
sound ; the sound of the great night-world of that Paris to which
she had come, heralded for her beauty by a thousand tongues.

Why could she not be happy ?

She dropped on her knees by lier bed of white satin, em-
broidered with garlanded roses, and let her head fall on her arms,
and wept bitterly.

In the opera-house the curtain had risen, and the realisation of
all he had lost was dawning upon the vision of Faust.

The voice of her husband came to her through the door.

“ Make your toilette rapidly,” he said ; “ we will dine quickly ;
there will be time to show yourself at the opera.”

Vero started and rose to her feet.

“ I am very tired ; the journey was long.”

“ Wo will not stay,” answered Prince ZourofF. “But you will
show yourself. Diess quickly.”

“ Would not another night ”

“ Ma c/ierc, do not dispute. I am not used to it.”

The words were slight, but the aCcent gave them ;a cold and
bard command, to which she had grown accustomed.

She said nothing more, but let her maid enter by an inner door.

The tears were wet on her lashes, and her mouth still quivered.
Tlic woman saw and pitied her, but with some contempt.

“Why do you larhent like that?” the woman thought; “ why
not amuse yourself ?”

Her maids were used to the caprices of Prince ZourofF, which
made his wife's toilette a thing which must be accomplished to
perfection in almost a moment of time. A very yOung and lovely
woman, also, can bo more easily adorned than one who needs a
thousand artificial aids. They dressed her very rapidly in white
velvet, setting some sapphires and diamonds in her bright hair.

‘‘Give me that necklace,” she said, pointing to one of the
partitions in one of the open jewel cases ; it was the necklace of
the moth and the star.

In ten minutes she descended to dinner. Bhc and her husband
were alone. Madame Nelaguine had gone to bed fatigued.

He ate little, but drank much, though one of the finest artists
of the Paris kitchens had done his best to tempt his taste with the
rarest and most delicate combination.

MOTHB. 14e

“ You do not seem to liav« much i ppetite,” he jsaid, after a
little wliile. “ Wegnay as well go. You look very well now.”

He looked at her narrowly-

Fatigue conquered, and emotion subdued, had given an un-
nsiial brilliancy to her eyes, an unusual flush to her cheeks. The
\\'hite velvet was scarcely whiter than her skin ; about her beautiful
throat the moth trembled between the flame and the star.

''Have you followed my advice and put some rouge?” he
asked suddenly.

Vere answered simply : “ No.”

“ Paris will say that you are handsomer than any of the
others,” he said carelessly. “ Let us go.”

Vere's cheeks flushed more deeply as she rose in obedience.
She knew that ho was thinking of all the other women whom Paris
had associated with his name.

She drew about her a cloak of white feathers, and went to her
carriage. Her heart was sick, yet it beat fast. She had learned to
be quite still, and to show nothing that she felt under all pain ;
and this emotion was scarcely pain, this sense that so soon the
voice of Corr^zc would reach her ear.

She was very tired ; all the night before she had not slept ; the
flitigne and feverishness of the long unbroken journey were upon
her, making her temples throb, her head swim, her limbs feel light
as air. But the excitement of one idea sustained her^ and made her
pulses quicken with fletitious strength : so soon she would hear the
voice of Correze.

A vague dread, a sense of apprehension that she could not have
exjdained, were upon her ; yet a delighted expectation came over
lier also, and was sweeter tlian any feeling that had ever been
X3ossible to her since her marriage.

As their carriage passed through the streets, her husband
smoked a cigarette, and did not speak at all. She was thankful
for the silence, though she fancied in it he must hear the loud fast
beating of her heart.

It was ten o’clock when they reached the opera-house. Her
husband gave her his arm, and they passed through the vestibule
and passage, and up the staircase to that door which at the com-
mencement of the season had been allotted to the name of Prince
ZourolT.

The house was hushed ; the music, which has all the fcv!?tasy
and the mystery of human passion in it, thrilled through the
stillness. Her husband took her through the corridor into their
box, which was next that which had once been the empress’s. The
vast circle of light seemed to whirl before her eyes.

Vere entered as though she were walking in her sleep, and sat
down.

On the stage there were standing alone Margherita and Faust.

The lights fell full lapon ihe cdassic profile of Correz^ and his

144

MOTHS.

eyelids were drooped, as Lj stood gazing on the maiden who knelt
at his feet. The costume he wore showed his graceful form to its
greatest advantage, and the melancholy of wistful passion that was
expressed on his iace at that moment made his beauty of feature
more impressive. His voice was silent at that moment when she
saw him thus once more, but his attitude w^as a poem, his face
was the face that she had seen by sunlight where the sweetbriar
sheltered the thrush.

Nut for her was he Faust, not for her was he tlio public idol of
Paris. He was the Saint Paphael of the Norman seashore, Slie
sat like one spellbound gazing at the stage.

Then Oorr^zc raised his head, his lips parted, and uttered the

Tu vuoi, ahime !

Che t* abbandoni.

It thrilled through the house, that exquisite and mysterious
music of the human voice, seeming to bring with it the echo of a
heaven for ever lost.

Women, indifferent to all else, would weep when they heard
the voice of Gorrezo.

Vere’s heart stood still ; then seemed to leap in her breast as
with a throb of new warm life. Unforgotten, unchanged, unlike
any other ever heard on earth, this perfect voice fell on her car
again, and held her entranced with its harmony. The ear has
its ecstasy as have other senses, and this ecstasy for the moment
held in suspense all other emotion, all other memory.

She sat quite motionless, leaning her cheek upon her hand.
When he sang, she only then scorned herself to live; when his
voice ceased, she seemed to lose hold upon existence, and the great
world of light around her seemed empty and mute.

Many eyes were turning on her, many tongues were whispering
of her, but she w.as unconscious of them. Her husband, glancing
at her, thought that no other woman would have been so indiffereiit
to the stare of Paris as she was ; he did not know that she was
insensible of it ; he only saw that she had grown very pale again,
and was annoyed, fearing that her entry would not be the brilliant
success that he desired it to be.

“ Perhaps she was too tired to come here,” he thought with some
impatience.

But Paris was looking at her in her white velvet, which was
like the snows she had quitted, and was finding her lovely beyond
compare, and worthy of the wild rumours of adoration that had
come before her from the north.

The opera, meanwhile, went on its course ; the scenes changed,
the third act ended, the curtain fell, the theatre resounded with tlic
polite applause of a cultured city.

She seemed to awake as from a dream. The door had opened,
and her husband was presenting some great persons to her.

MOTHS.

145

“You have eclipsed even Corr^zo, Princess,” said one of these.
In looking at yoil, Paris forgot for once^^to listen to its nightingale
It was fortunate fcg him, since he sung half a note false.”

“ Since you are so tired we will go,” said her husband, when
the fourth act was over; when a score of great men had bowed
themselves, in and out of her box, and the glasses of the whole
liouse had been levelled at the llussian beauty, as they termed her.

“ I am not so very tired now! ” she said wistfully.

Bhe longed to hear that voice of Faust as she had never longed
for anything.

“ If you are not tired you arc capricious, 7na chere” said her
husband, with a laugh. “ I brought you here that they might sec
you ; they have seen you ; now 1 am going to the club. Come.”

He wrapped her white feathery mantle round her, as though it
were snow that covered her, and took her away fiom the theatre as
the curtain rose.

He left her to go homeward alone, and went himself to the Hue
Scribe.

She was thankful.

“ You sang false, Correze! ” said mocking voices of women gaily
round him in the foyar. Ho was so eminent, so perfect, so felicitously
at the apex of his triumph and of art, that a momentary failure
could bo made a jest of without fear.

“ Pardieu ! ” said Correze, with a shrug of his shoulders. “ Par-
diou ! do you suppose I did not know it? A ffy flew in my throat.
1 sup])ose it will be in all the papers to-morrow. That is the sweet
side of fame.”

He shook him«elf free of his tormentors, and went to his
brougham as soon as his dress was changcnl. It was only one
o’clt)ck, and he had all Paris ready to amuse him.

But he felt out of tone and out of temper with all Paris ;
another half-note false and Paris would hiss him — even him.

He wont home to his house in the Avenue Marigny, and sent
his coachman away.

“ The beast ! ” he said to himself, as he entered his chamber ;
he was thinking of Sergius Zourofif. He threw himself down in an
easy chair, and sat alone lost in thought ; wliilst a score of supper-
tables were the duller for his absence, and more than one woman’s
iieart ached, or passion fretted, at it.

“ Who would have thought the sight of her would have moved
mo so 1 ” he said to hims«lf in sclf-scorn. “ A false note 1 — 1 1 ”

116

MOTHS.

OHAPTEE XIIL

In the hitter February weather all aristocratic Paris felt the gayer,
because the vast Hotel Zouro£f,ia the Avenue dii Bois de Boulogne,
had its scarlet-clad suisse leaning on his gold-headed staff at its
portals, and its tribes of liveried and unliveried lacqueys languishing
in its halls and ante-rooms ; since these signs showed that thi.*
Prince and Princess were en villCy and that the renowned beauty ot
the Winter Palace had brought her loveliness and her diamonds to
the capital of the world.

The Hotel Zouroff, under Nadine N41agiune, had been always
one of those grand foreign houses at which all great people meet ; a
noble Urra nullius in which all political differences were obliterated,
and all that was either well born or well received met, and the
Empire touched the Faubburg, and the Orleans princes brushed the
marshals of the Ilcpublic. The Hotel Zouroff had never been very
exclusive, but it had always been very brilliant. Under the young
Princess, Paris saw that it was likely to be much more exclusive,
and perhaps in proportion less entertaining. There was that in the
serene simplicity, the proud serious grace of the new mistress of it,
which rallied to her the old regime and scare<l away the new.

You should have been born a hundred years ago,” said her
husband with some impatience to her. You would make the
house the Hotel Ilambouillet.”

J do not care for the stories of the ‘ Figaro,’ at my dinner-
table, and I do not care to see the romi) of the cotillon in my ball-
room ; but it is your house, it must be ordered as you please,” slie
answered him; and she let Madame Nelaguine take the reins of
social government, and held herself aloof.

But though she effaced herself as much as possible, that tall
slender proud figure, with the grave colourless face that was so cold
and yet so innocent, had an effect that was not to be defined, yet
not to he resisted, as she received the guests of the Hotel Zouroff ;
and the entertainments there, though they gained in simplicity and
dignity, lost in entrain, Vero was not suited to her century.

Houses take their atmosphere from those who live in them, and
even the Hotel Zouroff, despite its traditions and its epoch, despite
its excess of magnificence and its follies of expenditure, yet had a
fresher and a purer air since the life of its new princess had come
into it.

“ You have married a young saint, and the house feels already
like a sacristy,” said the Duchesse de Sonnaz to Sergius Zouroff,
“ pb nous ohsede, mon vieux / ”

That was the feeling of society.

She was exquisitely lovely; she had a great distinction, she
knew a great deal, and though she spoke seldom, spoke well.

MOTHS^I 147

but she was obs^dante; sbe made them feel as if they were in
church.

Yet Paris spolie of nothing for tho moment but of the Princess
Zouroff. Peigning beauties were for the moment all dethroned,
and, as Paris had for years talked of his racers, his mistresses, his
play, and his vices, so it now talked of Sergius Zouroff’s wife.

That hiir, grave, colourless hice, so innocent yet so proud, so
childlike yet so thoughtful, with its musing eyes and its arched
mouth, became the theme of artists, the adoration of dandies, the
despair of women. As a maiden she vrould have been called lovely,
but too cold, and passed over. Married, she had that ])osition which
adorns as diamonds adorn, and that charm as of forbidden fruit,
which piques the sated palate of mankind.

She was the event of the year.

Her husband was not suiqaiscd either at her fame or her failure.

lie had foreseen both after the first week of his marriage.
“ She will be the rage for a season, for her face and her form,” ho
said to himself. Tiien they will find her enttHee and stupid, and
turn to some one else.” lie honestly thought her stupid.

She knew Greek and Latin and all that, but of the things that
make a w’oman brilliant she knew nothing.

Lilc seemed to Vere noisy, tedious, glaring, beyond conception;
she seemed, to herself, always to be ew schne; always to be being
dressed and being undressed for some fresh spectacle; always to be
surrounded with flatterers, and to be destitute of friends, never to
be alone. It seemed to her wonderful that people who could rule
their own lives chose incessant fatigue and called it pleasure. She
understood it in nothing. That her mother, after twenty years of
it, coulil yet pursue this life with excitement and preference seemed
to her so strange that it made her shudder. There was not an hour
for thouglit, scarcely a moment for prayer. She was very youngs
and she rose early while tho world was still sleeping, and tried so
to gain some little time for her old habits, her old tastes, her old
studies, but it was very diilicult ; she seemed to grow dizzy, tired,
useless. “ It was what I was sold to be,” she used to think bitterly.
Her husband was fastidious as to her appearance, and inexorable as
to her perpetual display of herself; for the rest ho said nothing to
her, unless it were to sharply rcjprove her for some oblivion of some
trifle in etiquette, some unconscious transgression of the innumer-
able unwritten laws of society.

In the midst of tho most brilliant circle of Europe, Vere was as
lonely as any captured bird. She would have been glad of a friend,
but she was shy and proud ; wqmcn were envious of her, and men
were afraid of her. She was not like her world or her time. She
was beautiful, but no one would ever have dreamed of classing
her with “the beauties” made by princely praise and public por-
traiture. She was as unlike them as the beauty of perfect statiwry
is unlike the Lilith and the Vivienne of modem pointing.

148

MOTHS.

Sometimes her husbanil was proud of that,, sometimes he was
annoyed at it. Soon he felt neither pride nor annoyance, but grew
indifferent.

Society noticed that she seldom smiled. When a smile did
come upon her face, it was as cold as the moonbeam that flits
bright and brief across a landscape on a cloudy night. Very close
observers saw that it was not coldness, but a melancholy too pro-
found for her years, that had robbed the light from her thoughtful
eyes ; but close observers in society are not numerous, and her
world in general believed her incapable of any emotion, or any sen-
timent, save that of a great pride.

They did not know that in the stead of any pride what weighed
on her night and day was the bitterness of humiliation — humilia-
tion they would never have understood — with which no one would
have sympathised ; a shame that made her say to herself, when she
went to her tribune at Chantilly, to see her husband^s horses run,
“ My place should be apart there, with those lost women ; what am
1 better than they ? ”

All the horror of the sin of the world had fallen suddenly on
her ignorance and innocence as an avalanche may fall on a young
chamois ; the knowledge of it oppressed her, and made a great
disgust stay always with her as her hourly burden.

She despised herself, and there is no sliamo more bitter to
endure.

“ You are unreasonable, my child,” said her sister-in-law, who,
in a cold way, w^as attached to her, and did pity her. Any other
woman as young as yourself would be happy. My brother is not
your ideal. No; that w'as not to be expected or hoped for; but he
leaves you your own way ; he is not a tyrant, he lets you enjoy
yourself as you may please to do ; he never controls your purse or
your caprice. Believe me, my love, that, as the world goes, this
is as nearly happiness as can be found in marriage — to have plenty
of money and to be let alone. You w'ant happiness, I know, but 1
doubt very much if happiness is really existent anywhere on earth,
unless you can get it out of social success and the discomfiture of
rivals, as most fortunate women do. I think you are unreasonable.
You are not offended ? No ? ”

“ Perhaps I am unreasonable,” assented Vere.

She never spoke of herself. Her lips had been shut on the day
that she had accepted the hand of Sergius Zouroff, and she kept
them closed.

She would have seemed unreasonable to every one, as to Prin-
cess N^laguine, had she done so.

Why could she not be happy ?

With youth, a lovely face and form, the great world her own,
and her riches boundless, why could she not be happy, or, at the
least, amused and fiattered ?

Amusement and flattery console most women, but they had

MOTHS.

149

failed as yet to console her. By example or by precept every one
about her made Ifer feel that they should do so. Upon the danger
of the teaching neither her husband nor society ever reflected.

Young lives are tossed upon the stream of the world, like rose-
leaves on a fast-running river, and the rose-leaves are blamed if the
riveirbe too strong and too swift for them, and they perish. It is
the fault of the rose-leaves.

When she thought that this life must endure all her life, slio
felt a despair that numbed her, as frost kills a flower. To the
very young, life looks so long.

To S(Tgiiis Zouroff innocence was nothing more than the virgin
bloom of a slave had been to his father — a thing to bo destroyed
for an owner’s diversion.

It amused him to lower her, morally and physicallyj and ho
cast all the naked truths of human vices before her shrinking
mind, as he made her body tremble at his touch. It was a diver-
sion, whilst the effect was novel. Like many another man, ho
never asked himself how the fidelity and the chastity that he still
expected to have preserved for him, would survive his own work of
destruction. Pie never remembered that as you sow so you may
reap. Nor if he had remembered would he have cared. Toute femme
triche was engraved on his conviction as a certain doctrine. The
l)urity and the simplicity, and the serious sen,se of right and wrong
that he discovered in Vere bewildered him, and half-awed, half-
irritated him. But that these would last after contact with the
world, he never for a moment believed, and he quickly ceased to
regard or to respect them.

He knew very well that his wife and his holies petites were crea-
tures so dissimilar that it seemed scarcely possible that the same
laws of nature had created and sustained them, the same humanity
claimed them. He knew that they were as unlike as the dove and
the snake, as the rose and the nightshade, but he treated them both
the same.

There was a woman who was seen on the Bois who drove with
white Spanish mules hung about with Spanish trappings, and had
a little mulatto boy behind her tlressed in scarlet. This eccentric
person was speedily celebrated in Paris. She was handsome in a
very dark, full-lipped, almond-eyed, mulattress fashion ; she got
the name of Cassc-une-Crofite, and no one ever heard or cared
whether she ever had had any other. Casso-une-Crofitc, who was
a mustang from over the seas, had made her debut modestly with
a banker, but she had soon blazed into that splendour in which
bankers, unless they are Rothschilds, are despisea. Prince Zouroff
had seen the white mules, and been struck with them. Casse-uno-
Crofitc had an apotheosis.

There was an actress who was called Noisette ; she was very
handsome, too, in a red and white way, like Rubens’s women ; she
too drove herself, but drove a mail-phaeton and very high-stepping

160 MOTES.

English' horses ; she drank "only Burgundy, hut plenty of it ; she
had a entre cour etjardin ; on the stage shh was very vulgar,
hut she had du chien and wonderful drolleries of expression. Prince
Zouroff did not care even to look at her, but she was the fashion,
and he had taken her away from his most intimate friend ; so, for
years, ho let her eat his roubles as a mouse eats rice, and never
could prevail on his vanity to break with her, lest men should
think she had broken with him.

In that unexplainable, instinctive way in which women of quick
perceptions come to know things that no one ever tells them, and
which is never definitely put before them in words, Pri^jeess Zouroff
became gradually h ware that Noisette and Casse-une-Crofite were
both the property of her husband. The white mules or tho mail
phaeton crossed her own carriage-horses a dozen times a week in
the Champs Elys<5es, and she looked away not to see those women,
and said in the bitter humiliation of her heart, “ What am I better
than either of them ! ” When either of them saw her, Casse-une-
Crohte said, “ P7d la petite ! ” contemptuously. Noisette said,
mangcrai weme ses diamants a dkJ*

“ Sergius,” said Nadine N<51aguine one night, “ in that wife that
you neglect for your creatures you have a pearl of price.”

“ And I am one of the swine, and best live with rny kind,”
said her brother savagely, because he was ashamed of himself, and
angered vrith all his ways of life, yet knew that he would no more
change them than will swine change theirs.

“ You have married a young saint. It is infinitely droll ! ” said
the Duchesse de Soiinaz, who was always called by her society
Madame Jeanne, one day to Sergius Zoui'off, as he sat with her in
her boudoir that was full of chinoiserieSf and Indian wares, and
Persian potteries.

Jeanne de Sonnaz was a woman of thirty- three years old, and
had been one of the few really great ladies who had condescended
to accept tho Second Empire. Born of the splendid Maison de
Merilhac, and married to the head of the scarce less ancient Maison
de Sonnaz, she belonged, root and branch, to the vkille souehe, and
her people all went annually to %ow the knee at Frohsdorf. But
Mdme. Jeanne, wedded at sixteen to a man who was wax in her
hands, had no fancy for sacrifice and seclusion for the sake of a
shadow and a lily. She was a woman who loved admiration and
who loved display. She had condescended to accept the Second
Empire, because it was tho millennium of these her twiu passions.
She had known that it would not last, but she had enjoyed it
while it did. ** un obus qui va she had always said

cheerfuHy, but meanwhile she had danced on the shell till it ex-
ploded, and now danced on its d<Sbris.

The Duchesse de Sonnaz dressed better than any living being ;
^8 charming, without having a good featuie in her face except
ber eyes, and was admired where Helen or Venus might have been

Moim.

151

overlooked. She vwui not very clever, but she was very malicioiif?,
which is more suficcssful with society, and very viotot, which is
raore successful with lovers. She had the power of being very
agreeable. To the young Princess Zouroff she made herseS even
unusually so,

Vere did not notice that even a polite society could not help a
smile when it saw them together.

‘^You have married a young saint; it is very droll,” the
duchesse now said for the twentieth time to Zourolf. “ But do you
know that I like her ? Is not that very droll too ? ”

“ It is very fortunate for me,'* said Zouroff drily, wondering if
she were telling him a lie, and, if so, why she told one.

She was not lying ; though,' when she had first heard of his
intended marriage, she had been beside berself with rage, and had
even rung violently for them to send her husband to her that she
might cry aloud to him, “ You never revenge yourself, but you
must and you shall revenge me.” Fortunately for the jjeaco of
Europe her husband was at the club, and by the time be had
returned thence she had thought better of it.

“ Wliat will you do with a saint ? ” she continued now. It
is not a thing for you. It must be like that White Stvan in
‘ Lolicngrin.* ”

“ She is stupid,” said Zouroff ; “ but she is .very honest.”

** llow amusing a combination ! ”

“ I do not see much of her,” Zouroff added with an air of
fatigue. “ I think she will be always the same. She docs not
adapt herself. It is a pity her children should not live. She is the
sort of woman to be a devoted mother.”

Qud beau role ! and she is not eighteen yet,” said Madame de
Sonnaz with amusement.

^'It is wliat we marry good women for,” he said somew^hat
gloomily. ** They never divert one ; every one knows that. Elies
ne savent pas s^encanaiUerJ^

Jeanne de Sonnaz laughed again, but her face had an angry
irony in it.

“ Yes : nous nous encanaillon^'; that is our charm. A beautiful
compliment. But it is true. It is the charm of our novels, of our
theatres, of our epoch. Le temps nous erifante. Things manage
themselves droll y. A man like you gets a young angel ; and an
honest, stupid, innocent soul like my poor Paul gets — me.”

Zouroff offered her no compliment and no contradiction; he
was sitting gloomily amidst the chinoiseries and porcelains, but
their intercourse had long passed the stage at which flattery is
needful. He was glad for sake of peace that she was not an enemy
of Verc’s; but he was annoyed to hear her praise his wife. Why
did everyone regard the girl as sacrificed? It offended and annoyed
him. She had everything that she could w^ant. Hundreds of
wx)inen would have asked no more admirable fate than was hewL

153

MOTHS.

“ She is of tho old typo ; the old type i)uro are proud,” his
friend pursued, unheeding his silence. “ We ’fv^ant to see it now
and then. She would go grandly to the guillotine, but slie will
never understand her own times, and she will always have a con-
tempt for them. She has dignity ; we have not a sera]), we have
forgotten what it was like; wc go into a passion at the amount of
our bills ; wc play and never pay ; we smoke and we wrangle ; wc
have cafe-singers who teach us slang songs ; we laugh loud, much
too loud ; wc intrigue vulgarly, and when we are found out, we
scuffle, which is more vulgar still ; we inspire nothing unless now
and then a bad war or a disastrous speculation ; we live showily,
noisily, meanly, gaudily. You have said, ‘ On salt s'encanai/lerj'
Well, your wife is not like us. You should be thankful.”

“ All the same,” said Zouroff, with a shrug of his shoulders,
“ she is not amusing.”

** Oh, that is another affair. Even if she were, I do not believe
you would go to your wife to bo amused. I think you are sim])ly
discontented with her because she is not somebody else’s wife. If
she were fast and frivolous you would be angry at that.”

“ She is certainly not fast or frivolous! ”

“Perhaps, my friend — after all — it is only that she is not
happy,”

Jt was the one little ix)ison-tippcd arrow that she could not help
speeding against the man whoso marriage had been an insult to a
“ friendship ” of many years' duration,

“If she were not a fool she would bo perfectly hapjiy/Mjo
answered petulantly, and with a frown.

“Or if she understood compensations as we understand them,”
said Mdme. do Sonnaz, lighting a cigarette. “ Perhaps she never
will understand them. Or, perhaps, on tho other hand, some day
she will.”

“ Vous plaisanteZy madame^' said Sergius Zouroff with a growl,
as the duchess laughed.

A sullen resentment rose in him against Vere. He had meant
to forget her, once married to her. The marriage had been a
caprice; he had been moved to a sudden passion that had been
heightened by her aversion and her reluctance ; she did as well as
another to bear children and grace his name ; he had never meant
to make a burden of her, and now every one had agreed to speak of
her as a martyr to her position.

. Her position I he thought ; what woman in Europe would not
have been happy in it ?

Vere herself might have fanciful regrets and fantastic senti-
ments ; that he could admit ; she was a child, and had odd
thoughts and tastes ; hut he rejgented the pity for her — pity for her
as being his— that .spoke by the cynical lips of his sister and
Jeanne de Sonnaz.

He began almost to wish that she would be brought to under-*

motes: 15^

stand the necessity de 8*encanaiUer, There are times when the
very purity of a Tfoman annoys and oppresses a man — even when
she is his wife ; perhaps most of ajl when she is so.

Jf she had disobeyed him or had any fault against him, he
could still have found some pleasure in tyranny over her; but she
never rebelled, she never opi)oscd him. Obedience was all she had
to give him, and she gave it in all loyalty; her grandmother had
reared her in old-world ideas of duty that she found utterly out of
place in the day she lived in, yet she clung to them as she clung
to her belief in heaven.

Her whole nature recoiled from the man to whom she owed
obedience, yet she knew obedience was his due, and she gave it.
Although he would have borne with nothing less, yet this passivo
submission had begun to irritate him ; his commands were caprices,
wilful, changeable, and unreasonable. But as they were always
obeyed, it ceased to be any amusement to impose them.

He hi gan to think that she was merely stupid.

He would have believed that she was quite stiqad, and nothing
else, but for a certain look in her eyes now and theii when she
spoke, a certain gesture that occasionally escaped her of utter con-
tempt and weariness. Then he caught sight for a moment of
depths in Vero's nature that he did not fathom, of possibilities in
her character that he did not take into consideration.

Had she been any other man’s wife, the contradiction would
have attracted him, and he would have studied her temi)er and her
tastes. As it was he only felt some irritation, and some ennui
because his wife was not like his world.

“She is not amusing, and she is not grateful,” ho would say,
and eaeli day he saw less of her and left her to shape her own life
as she chose.

CHAPTER XIV.

Jx the chilly spring weather Lady Dolly sitting on one chair with
her pretty little feet on another chair, was at Hurlingham watching
the opening match of the year and saying to her friend Lady Stoat
of Stitchley : “ Oh, my dear, yes, it is so sad, hut you know my
sweet child never was quite like other I'cople ; never will be, I am
afraid. And she never did care for me. It was all that horrid old
woman, who brought her up so strangely, and divided entirely
from me in every way, and made a perfect Methodist of her, really
a Methodist ! If Vere were not so exquisitely pretty she would be
too ridiculous. As she is so handsome, men don’t abuse her so
much as they would if she were only just nice-looking. But she is
very very odd ; and it is so horrible to be odd ? I would really

154 MOTHS.

sooner ]iave her ugly. She is so odd. Never would spoak to me
cveu of the birth and death of her baby. Coifid you believe it ?
Not a word ! not a word ! What would you feel if Gwcndalin. . . .
Goodness! the Duke and Fred have tied. Is it true, Colonel
Rochfort? Yes? Thanks. A pencil, one moment; thanks. Ah,
you never bet, Adine, do you ? But, really, pigeon-shooting’s very
stupid if you don’t. Talking of bets, Colonel Rochfort, try and get
^ two monkeys ' for me on Tambour-Battant to-morrow, will you ?
I’ve been told a thing about his trainer; it will be quite safe, quite.
As I was saying, dear, she never would speak to me about that
poor little lost cherub. Was it not sad — terrible? Of course she
will have plenty of others ; but still, never to sorrow for it at all —
so unnatural 1 Zouroff felt it much more ; he has grown very nice,
really very nice. Ahl that bird has got away; the Lords will
lose, I am afraid, after all. Ah, my dear Lestercl, how are you?
What are they saying of my child in your Paris?”

The Marquis de Lesterel, secretary of legation, bowed smiling.

“ Madame la Princesse has turned the head of ‘ tout Paris.' It
was too cruel of you, madame ; had you not already done mischief
enough to men that you must distract them with such loveliness
in your daughter ? ”

“All that is charming, and goes for nothing,” said Lady Dolly
good-humouredly. “ I know Vera is handsome, but does she take ?
Ast^ce qu*elle a du charme f That is much more.”

“But certainly!” rejoined the French marquis with much
emphasis ; “ she is very cold, it is true, which leaves us all lament-
ing ; and nothing, or very little at least, seems to interest her.”

“ Precisely what I expected I ” said Lady Dolly despairingly.
** Then she has not du charme. Nobody has who is not amused
easily and amused often.”

“ Pardon 1 ” said the marquis. There is charme and charme.
There is that of the easily accessible and of the inaccessible, of the
rosebud and of the edelweiss.”

“Does she make many friends there?” she continued, pursuing
her inquiries, curiosity masked as maternal interest. “Many
women-friends, I mean ; I am so afraid Vera does not like women
•much, and there is nothing that looks so unamiable.”

“It would be impossible to suspect the Princess of un-
amiability,” said the marquis quickly. “ One look at that serene
and noble countenance ”

“Very nice, very pretty; but Vera can be unamiable,” said
her mother tartl 5 ^ “ Do tell me, is there any women she takes to
At all ? Any one she seems to like much."

(“Anybody she is likely to tell about me?” she was thinking
in the apprehension of her heart.)

“Mfa<£ame N41aguine ” — began the young man.

"Oh, her sister-in-law 1 ” said Lady Dolly. “ Yes, I believe she
■does like that horrid woman. I always hated Nadine myself —

MOTHB, 166

.f;nch an ordcnug sharp creature, and such a tongue! Of course I
Iciiow the Nclaguini^ is never out of their house ; but is there any-
body else?"

A little smile came on the face of the Parisian.

‘‘The Princess is often with Madame de Sonnaz, Madame
Jeanne admires her very much.’’

Lady Dolly stared a minute, and then laughed; and Lady
Stoat even smiled discreetly.

“ I wonder what that is /or," murmured Lady Dolly vaguely,
and, in a whisper to Lady Stoat, she added, “ She must mean mis-
chief; she always means mischief; she took his marriage too
quietly not to avenge herself."

“People forget nowadays; I don’t think they revenge," said
Lady Stoat consolingly.

“ When did you see my poor darling last ? " asked Lady Dolly
aloud.

“At three o’clock last night, madarnc, at the Elys<5e. She
looked like a Greek poet’s dream draped by Worth.”

“ How very imaginative 1 ” said Lady Dolly, a little jeal 9 usly.
■“How could poor dear Worth dress a dream? That woul4 tax
even his powers ! I hope she goes down to Surennes and chats
with him quietly; that is the only way to get him to give his
mind to anything really good. But she never cares about that sort
of thing; never!"

“ The Princess ZourofF knows well,” said the Marquis de
Lesterel, with some malice and more ardour, “ that let her drape
herself in what she might, wore it sackcloth and ashes, she would
bo lovelier in it than any other -women ever was on earth — except
her mother," he added with a chivalrous bow.

“ What a horrid thing it is to bo anybody’s mother ! and how
old it makes one feel — shunt’ it as one may!” thought Lady
Dolly as she laughed and answered, “ You arc actually in love with
her, marquis ! Pray remember that I am hen mother, and that she
has not been married much more than a year. I am very delighted
that she does please in Paris. It is her home, really her home.
They will go to Petersburg once in ten years, but Paris will see
them every year of their lives ; Zouroff can be scarcely said to exist
out of it. I am so very very sorry the boy died ; it just lived to
breathe and be baptised, you know; named after the Czar. So
sad ! — oh, so sad ! Who is that shooting now? Begy ? Ah-h-h !
•'I he bird is inside the palings, isn’t it? Oh 1 that is superb ! Just
j nside ] — only just ! "

And Lady Dolly scribbled again in a tiny betting-book, bound
in oxydised silver, that had cost fifty guineas in Bond Street.

Lady Dolly was very fond of betting. As she practised it, it was
both simple and agreeable. She was always paid, and never paid.

The ladies who pursue the art on these simplified principles are
numerous, and find it profitable.

156

MOTHS.

When Colonel Hochf^rt, a handsome young man in the Eifles^,
tried the next day to get her five hundred n,” at Newmarket,
the Ring was prudent ; it would take it in his name, not in hers.

But the men of her world could not be as prudent — and as rude
as the Ring was. Besides, Lady Dorothy Vanderdecken was still
a very pretty woman, with charming little tricks of manner and a
cultured sagacious coquetry that was hard to resist; and she was
very good company too at a little dinner at the Orleans Club,
when the nightingales sang, or tete-a-tete in her famlined octagon
boudoir.

Lady Dolly did not sec much of her daughter. Lady Dolly
had taken seriously to London. London had got so much nicer,
she said, so much less starchy; so much more amusing; it was
quite wonderful how London had improved since polo and pigeon-
shooting had opened its mind. Sundays were great fun in London
now, and all that old nonsense about being so very particular had
quite gone out. London people, the very best of them, always
seemed, somehow or other — what should one say? — provincial,
after Paris. Yes, provincial ; but still London was very irico, and
Lady Dorothy Vanderdecken was quite a great person in it ; she
had always managed so well that nobody ever had talked about her.

** It is so horrid to be talked about, you know,'^ she used to
say; “and, after all, so silly. to (jet talked about. You can do just
as you like if you are only careful to do the right things at tho
I’ight time and be seen about with the right people. I am always
so angry with tliosc stujad women that arc compromised ; it is quite
too dreadfully foolish of them, Ixjcausc, you know, really, nobody
need be. People arc always nice if one is nice to tliem.”

So, from New Year to Midsummer she was in the house in
Chesham Place, which she made quite charming with all sorts of
old Italian things and the sombre and stately Cinque Cento,
etfectively, if barbarously, mixed up with all the extravagancies of
modem upholstery. ^Lady Dolly’s house, under the combination
of millinery and mediasvalism, was too perfect, everybody said;
and she had a new friend in her Sicilian attached to the Italian
Legation, who helped her a great deal with his good taste, and sent
her things over from liis grim old castles in tho ’Jhormina ; and it
was a new toy and amused her ; and her fancy-dress frisks, and her
musical breakfasts, were great successes ; and, on the whole. Lady
Dolly had grown very popular. As for Mr. Vanderdecken, he was
always stingy and a bear, but he knew how to behave. He repre-
sented a remote and peaceable borough, which he had bought as
his wife bought a jwodle or a piece of pate tendre ; he snored
decorously on the benches of St. Stephen*s, and went to ministerial
dinners, and did other duties of a rich man’s life ; and, for the rest
of his time, was absorbed in those foreign speculations and gigantic
loans which constituted his business, and took him to Java, or
Japan, or Jupiter so often. He was large, ugly, solemn, but he

MOTHS.

167

did extremely well, in his place, which 'was an imohtnisive one,
like the great Jap^ese bronze who sat cross-legged in the hall.
What he thought no one knew ; he was as mute on tlic subject of
his opinions as the bronze was. In the new ’order of fashionable
marriage a silence that must never be broken is the part allotted to
the husband; and the only part he is expected to take.

On the whole Lady Dolly was very contented. Now and then
Jura would give her a sombre glance, or Zouroff a grim smile, that
recalled a time to her when she had been on the very brink of the
precipice, on the very edge of the outer darkness, and the recol-
lection made her quite sick for the moment. Hut the qualm soon
passed. She was quite safe now, and she had learned wisdom.
She knew how to be “ so naughty and so nice ” in the way that
society in London likes, and never punishes. She had been very
silly sometimes, but she was never silly now, and meant to never
be silly any more. She tempered roulette with ritualism, and
always went to St. Margaret*s church in the morning of a Sunday,
if she dined down at the Orleans or at old Skindle’s in the evening.
She had had a great “ scare,” and the peril and the fright of it had
sobered her and shown her the way she should go.

For I^ady Dolly was always very careful of appearances ; she
had no patience with people who were not. “ It is such very bad
lurm to make people talk,” she would always say ; ** and it is sc
easy to stop their mouths.”

Lady Dolly liked to go to court, to be intimate with the best
people, to dine at royal tables, and to “ be in the swim,” altogether.
Kverybody knew she was a naughty little woman, hut she had
never been on the debateable land ; she had never been one of the
paniers d quinze sous ; ” she had never been coldly looked on by
anybody. She never let “ Jack,” or anybody who preceded or suc-
ceeded “ Jack,” get her into trouble. She liked to go everywhere,
and slic knew that, if people once begin to talk, you may very
soon go nowhere.

Siic w as not very wise in anything else, but she was yery wise
ill knowing her own interests. Frightened and sobered, she had
said to herself that it was a horrible thing to get any scandal about
you ; to fall out of society ; to have to content yourself with third-
rate drawing-rooms ; to have to take your gaieties in obscure conti-
nental towns ; to reign still, but only reign over a lot of shady
dubious declasse people, some with titles and some without, hut
all “ nowhere ” in the great race. It was a horrible thing ; and
fhe vowed to herself that never, never, never, should it be her
fate.

So she took seriously to the big house in Chesham Place, and
her religion became one of the prettiest trifles in all the town.

With her brougham full of hothouse flowers, going to the
Children's Hospital, or shutting herself up and w'earing black all
Holy Week, she was a most edifying study. She maintained some

15S MOTES.

orphans at the Princess l^JIary’s pet home^ and she was never absent
if Stafford House had a new charitable craze* She did not go into-
extremes, for she had very good taste ; but only said very inno-
cently, “ Oh, all these things are second nature to me, you know ;
you know my poor Vere was a clergyman.”

If she did sing naiiglity little songs after dinner on the lawn at
the Orleans ; if the Sicilian attache were always rearranging pictures
or tapestries in her drawing-rooms ; if she did bet and lose and
never pay ; if she did go to fancy frisks in a few yards of gossamer
and her jewels, nobody ever said anything, except that she was
such a dear little woman. It is such a sensible thing to ‘'pull
yourself together " and be wise in time.

Lord J ura, who was leading his old life, with Lady Dolly left
out of it, stupidly and joylessly, because ho had got into the groove
of it, 'and could not get out, and who had become gloomy, taciturn,
and inclined to drink more than was good for him, used to watch
the comedy of Lady Dolly’s better-ordered life with a cynical
savage diversion. When he had come back from his Asiatic hunting
tour, which had lasted eighteen months, he had met her as men
and women do meet in society, no matter what tragedies divide or
hatreds rage in them ; but she had seen very well that “ Jack ”
was lost to her for ever. She did not even try to get him back ;
and when she heard men say that Jura was not the good fellow he
used to he, and jdayed too high and drank too deej) for the great
name he bore, she was pleased, because he had had no earthly right
to go off in that rough way, or say the things he had said.

“ I never see very much of Jura now,” she would say to her
friends. “ He is become so very farouche since that eastern trip ;
perhaps some woman — I said so to his dear old father last week —
poor Jack is so good and so weak, he is just the man to fall a prey
to a had woman.”

The ladies to whom she said this laughed a little amongst
themselves when they had left her, but they liked her all the bettor
for ridding herself of an old embarrassment so prettily ; it formed
a very good precedent. Jura of course said nothing, except to hiir
very intimate friends who rallied him. To them ho said, “Well
I went to India, you know, and she didn’t like it, and when I came
back she had got the Sicilian fellow with her. So I don’t bore her
any more ; she is a dear little woman ; yes.”

For honour makes a lie our social life’s chief necessity, and
Jura, having thus lied for honour’s sake, would think of the
Princess Zouroff in Paris, and swear round oaths to himself, and
go upstairs where they were playing baccarat, and signing fortunes
and estates away with the scrawl of a watch-chain’s pencU.

“ I think I could have made her happy if it hadn’t been im-
possible,” he would think sometimes. “She would always have
been miles beyond me, and no man that ever lived would have been
good enough for her ; but I think I could have made her happy ; I

MOTHS.

m

would have serve4 Iier and followed |er like a dog — anyway,
I would have been true to her, and kept my life decent and clean ;
not like that brute?.”

Then he would curse Sergius ZouroflF, as he went home alone
down St. James's Street in the grey fog of early morning, sick of
pleasure, weary of play, dull with brandy, but not consoled by it ;
knowing that he might have been a better man, seeing the better
ways too late ; loathing the senseless routine of his life, but too
listless to shake off habit and custom, and find out any different
or higher life.

lie was Earl of Jura ; he had a vast inheritance; he had good
health and good looks ; he was sound in wind and limb ; ho had
a fair share of intelligence, if his mind was slow ; in a few years,
when ho should succeed to his father, he would have a tliousand
pounds a day as his income. Yet he had got as utterly -into a
groove that he hated as any ploughman that rises every Jay to
tread the same fields behind the same cattle ; and habit made
him as powerless to get out of it as his poverty makes the plough-
man.

** London is the first city in the world, they say,” ho thought,
as he went down St. James’s in the mists that made a summer
morning cheerless as winter, and as colourlcsjr. “ Wedl, it may be,
for aught I know ; but, damn it all, if I don't think the Sioux iu
the big swamps, or the hill tribes in the Cashgar passes, are more
like men than we are. And wo are all so used to it, we never seo
what fools we are.”

CHAPTER XV.

Oke morning the young Huko of Mull and Cantire arrived in
Paris, where he was seldom seen, and chanced to find his cousin
alone in her morning room at the Hotel Zouroff.

He was a good-looking young man, with a stupid honest face ;
he dressed shabbily and roughly, yet always looked like a gentle-
man. He had no talents, but, to compensate, he had no vices ; ho
was very simple, very loyal, and very trustful. He was fond of
Vere, and had been dismayed at the marriage so rapidly arranged ;
hut ho had seen her at St. Petersburg, and was deceived by her
coldness and calm into thinking her consoled by ambition.

“ I am about to marry too,”kLe said, with a shamefaced laugh,
a little while after his entrance. “ I have asked her again and she
says “ Yes,” I ran down to Paris to tell you this.”

Vere looked at him with dismay.

You do not mean Fuschia Leach ? ” she said quickly.

Thfi young duke nodded.

160 MOTHS.

She’s quite too awfuiy prett}^ you know ; a fellow can’t help

it.” ‘

She is pretty, certainly.” »

“ Oh, hang it, Vere, that’s worse than abusing her. You hate
her, I can see. Of course I know she isn't our form, but — but— 1
am very fond of her ; dreadfully fond of her ; and you will see, in
a year or two, how fast she will pick it all uj) ”

Vere sat silent.

She was deeply angered ; her chief fault was pride, an incurable
jjride of birth with all its prejudices, strong as the prejudices of
youth alone can be.

“ Won’t you say something kind? ” faltered her cousin.

“ I cannot pretend what I do not feci,” she said coldly. “ I
think such a marriage a great iinworthiness, a great disgrace. This
— this-r~pcrson is not a gcnilewoinari, and never u'ill be one, ainl
I think tiiat you will repent giving your name to her — if you ilo
ever give it.”

“1 give it most certainly,” said the young lover hotly and
sullenly ; “ and if you and 1 arc to he friends, dear, in the future,
you must welcome her as a friend too.”

“1 shall not ever do that,” said Vere simi)ly; but the words,
though they were so calm, gave him a chill.

suppose you will turn tlie forests into coal-mines now?”
she added, after a moment’s pause. The youug man reddened.

“Poor grandmamma!” said Vere wistfully, and licr eyes filled
with tears.

The stern old woman loved her grandchildren well, and had
done lier best by them, and all they were fated to bring her in her
old age were pain and humiliation.

Would the old duchess ever force herself to touch the flower-
like cheek of Fuschia Leach with a kiss of grectiug V Never,
thought Vere ; never, never !

“When all is said and done,” muttered the young duke
angrily, “ what is the. utmost you can bring against my poor love?
That she is not our form ? That she doesn’t talk in our way, but
says * cunning ' where wo say * nice ' ? Is that a great crime ? She
is exfpiisitely pretty. She is as clever as anything — a prince of
the blood might be proud of her. She has a foot for Cinderella’s
slipper. She never tried to catch me, not she ; she sent me about
my business twice ; laughed at me because I wear such old hats ;
she's as frank as sunlight 1 God bless her ! ”

“ I think we will not speak of her,” said Vere, coldly. “ Of
course you do as you please. I used to think Herbert of Mull a
great name, but perhaps I was mistaken. I was only a child. I
am almost glad it has ceased to be mine, since so soon she will
own it. Will you not stay to dinner; Monsieur Zouroff will bo
most happy to see you ? ”

“ I will see your husband before I leave Paris,” said the youn<T

MOTHS.

161

nian, a little moodily, “ and I am very sorry you take it like tliat,
Vcre, because you#ind I were always good friends at old Bulmer.”

iliink you will find every .one will take it like that — who
cares for you or your honour.”

“ Honour ! — Vere, I should be so sorry to quarrel. We won’t
discuss this thing. It is no use.”

No. It is no use.”

But she sighed as she spoke ; it was a link the more added to
the heavy chain that she dragged with her now. Every one seemed
failing her, and all old faiths seemed changing. Ho was the head
of her family, and she knew his uprightuoss, his excellence, his
stainless honour — and he was about to marry Fuschia Leach.

The visit of her cousin brought back to her, poignantly and
freshly, the pain of the letter written to her on her own marriage
from Bulmcr. A great longing for that old innocent life, all dull
and sombre though it had been, came on her as she sat in solitude
after he had left her, and thought of the dark wet woods, the
rough grey seas, the long gallops on forest ponies, the keen force
of the north wind beating and bending the gnarled storm-shaven
trees.

What she would have given to have been Vere Herbert once
again ! never to have known this weary, gilded, perfumed, deco-
rated, restless, and insincere world to which slm had boon sold!

“ Beally 1 doji’t know what to say,” said Lady Dolly, when, in
licr turn, she heard the tidings in London. “ No, really I don’t.
Of course you ought to many money, Frank ; an immensity of
money; and most of these Americans have such heaps. It is a
very bad marriage for you, very ; and yet she is so very much the
fashion, I really don’t know what to say. And it will drive your
grandmother wild, whicli will be delightful; and these American
women alwexys get on somehow ; they have a way of getting on ;
I dare say she will bo Mistress of the llobcs some day, and all
sorts of things. She is horribly bad form ; you don’t mind my
saying so, because you must see U for yourself. But then it goes
down, and it pleases better than any.diiiig ; so, after all, I am not
sure tliat it matters. And, besides, she will change wonderfully
when she is Duchess of Mull. AH those wild little republicans
get as starchy as possible once they get a European title. They
are just like those scatter-brained princes in history, that turn out
such stern good-goody sort of despots, when once the crown is on
their heads. Beally I don’t know what to say. I know quite well
she meant to get you when she went to Stagholme this October
after you. Oh, you thought it was accident, did you? How
innocent of you, and how nice 1 You ought to have married more
money ; and it is horrible to have a wife who never had a grand-
father ; but still, I don’t know, she will make your place very
lively, and she won’t let you wear old hats. Yes — yes — you might
have done "worse. You might have married out of a music-hall oi

M

162

MOTHS.

a circus. Some of them do. And, after all, hVischia Leach is a
person everybody can

The young lover did not feel much comforted by this form of
congratulation, but it was the best that any of his own family and
I'riends had given him, and Lady Dolly quite meant to be kind.

She was ratlicr glad herself that the American would be Dnehess
of Mull. She had hated all the Herberts for many a long year, and
she knew that, one and all, they would sooner have seen the young
chief of tlieir race in his grave. Lady Dolly felt that in largo things
and little, Providence, after treating her very badly, was at last
giving her her own waj".

The young Duke of Mull a month later had his way, and married
his brilliant Fuschia in the teeth of the stiffest opposition and blackest
anathemas from his family. Not one of them deigned to he present
at the ceremony of his sacrifice (ixeept his aunt, Lady Dorothy Van-
derdcckcn, who said to her friends —

“ 1 hate the thing quite as much as they all do, hut I can’t be
ill-natured, and poor Frank feels it so ; and, after all, you know, he
might have married out of a music-hall or a circus. So many of
them do.”

Pcojdo said what a dear little amiable woman she was ; so dif-
ferent from her daughter; and, on the whole, the marriage, with
choral service at the Abhej^, and breakfast at a monster hotel where
Mrs. Leach had a wtiole half of the first floor, was a very magnificent
affair, and was adorned with great names desjute the ominous
absence of the Herberts of Mull.

“ I’m glad that girl put my monkey up about the coal, and made
me whistle him hack,” thought the brilliant Fuschia to herself as
the choir sang her epithalamium. It’s a whole suit and all the
buttons on ; after all, a duchess is always a four-horse concern when
she’s an Eiij;]ish one ; and they do think it some pumpkins at home.
I’m afraid the money’s whittled away a good deal, but we’ll dig for
that coal before the year’s out. Duchess of Mull and Caiitire ! Afti'r
all it’s a big thing, and sounds smart.”

And the hells, as they rang, seemed to her fiincy to ring that and
that only all over Ijondoti. Duchess of Mull ! Duchess of MulH”

It was a raw, dark, rainy day, in the middle of March, as un-
pleasant as London weather could possibly he ; but the shining eyes
of the lovely Fuschia, and her jewels, and her smiles, seemed to
change the sooty, murky, znists to tropic sunsbinc.

“How will you quarter the arms, Frank?” whispered Lady
Dolly, as she bade her nephew adieu. “ A pig gnhs with a knife
in its throat, and a hcttlo argent of pick-me-up? — how nice the
new blazonries will look I ”

But the young duke had no cars for her.

Very uselessly, hut very feverishly, the obligation to call
Fuschia Leach cousin irritated the Princess Zourolf into an un-
ceasing pain and anger, I’o her own cousin on the marriage sbo

MOTHS.

163

{icnt a malacliite ftauinet and some grand jado vases, and there
ended her acknowkdgmcnt of it. She was offended, and did not
conceal it.

When the world who had adored Pick-me-up as a maiden, found
Pick-me-up as Duchess of Mull and Cantiro as adorable as another
generation had found Georgina Duchess of Devonshire, Verc*s proud
mouth smiled with incfiablo contempt.

‘‘AVhatwill jmu, my love?” said Madame Nelagiiine. “She
is frightfully vulgar, but it is a piquanto vulgarity. It takes.”

Ycre frowned and her lips set close.

“ She has made him sink coal shafts in the forest already ; our
forest!”

IMadame Nclaguine shrugged her shoulders.

“It is a i)ity, for the forests. Put we dig for salt; it is ijeancr,
prettier, but I am not sure that is more princely, salt than coal.’*

“ No Herbert of Mull has ever done it,** said Vero with darken-
ing flashing eyes. “ Not one in all the centuries that we have been
on tlie Northumbrian seaboard, for we were there in the days of
Otterbournc and Floddcn. No man of them would ever do it. Oh,
if you had ever scon that forest ; and soon now it will be a blackened,
smoking, recking, treeless waste. It is shameful of my cousin
Francis.’*

lie is ill love still, and docs what she tells him. My dear, our
sox is divided into two sorts of women — those who always get their
own way and those wdio never get it. Pick-mc-up, as they call
your cousin’s wife in London, is of the fortunate first sort. She is
vulgar, ignorant, audacious, uneducated, but she takes, and in her
way she is maUresse femme. You have a thousand times more mind,
and ten thousand times more character, yet you do not get your
own way; you never will get it.”

1 would liave lived on becchmast and acorns from the forest
trees sooner than have sunk a shaft under one of them,” said Vero
uuhec'ding, only thinking of the grand old glades, the deep, still
greenery, the mossy haunts of buck and doe, the uplands and the
yellow gorze, that were to be delivered over now to the smoke-
hend.

That I quite hclicvc,” said her sister-in-law. “But it is just
that kind of sentiment in you which will for ever prevent your
having influonco. You are too lofty ; you do not stoop and see the
threads in the dust that guide men.”

“ For thirteen centuries the forest has been untouched,** an-
swered Vere.

It was an outrage that she could not forgive.

When she first met the Duchess of Mull after her marriage,
Fuschia Leach, translated into Her Grace, said across a drawing-
room, “ Vera, 1 am going to dig for that coal. I guess wc’ll live to
make a pile that way.** Vere deigned to give no answer, unless a
quick angry flush, and the instant turning of her back on the ne\^

164 :

MOTHS.

duclicss, could be called one. The young dukersat between them,
awTd, awkward, and ashamed. f

“ I will never forgive it,” his cousin said to him later. “ I will
never forgive it. She knows ho better because she w'as born so —
but you ! ”

He muttered a commonplace about waste of mineral wealth, and
felt a poor creature.

** ] tliink you’re quite right to dig,” said Lady Dolly in his car
to console him. “ Quite right to dig; -why not? I dare say your
wife will make your fortune, and I am sure she ought if she can,
to compensate for her papa, who hel])s peojde to ‘ liquor up,’ and
Iier brothers, who are in the pig-killing trade, pig-killing by
machinery ; i’vo seen a picture of it in the papers ; the pigs go
down a gangway, as we do on to the Channel steamers, and they
come up hams and sausages. Won’t you have the pig-killcrs over?
They \vv)uld be quite dans Ic metier at Hurlinghain. Of course she
tells you to dig, and you do it. Good husbands always do what
they’re told.”

For Lady Dolly detested all the Herberts, and had no mercy
wdiatevor on any one of them ; and, in her waiy, she was a haughty
little woman, and though she was shrewd enough to sec that in her
day aristocracy to bo popular must pretend to be democratic, she
did not relish any more than any other member of that great family,
the connection of it*s licad with the pig-killing brotliers down west.

Yet, on the wdiole, she made herself pleasant to the new duchess,
discerning that the lovel,y Fuschia possessed in reserve an immense
retaliating ])OW'er of being nasty” w^cro she displctvscd, so that
scusible Lady Dolly even went the length of doing what all the
rest of the Mull family flatly refused to do — she presented her niece
“ on her marriage.”

And Her Grace, who, on her first girlish presentation, when she
had first come over “ the lucklc-field,” had confessed herself '' flus-
tered,” was, on this second occasion perfectly equal to it ; carrying
her feathers as if she had been born with them on her head, and
bending her hriglit checks over a bouquet in such a manner that all
London dropped at lier feet. If Sam and Saul could see me,”

1 bought the American beauty, hiding a grin with her roses; her
memory reverting to the big brothers, at that moment standing
above a great tank of pigs’ blood, counting the dead Tins” as they
were cast into the caldrons.

“ It is so very extraordinary. I suppose it is because she is so
dreadfully odd,” said Lady Dolly of her daughter to Lady Stoat that
spring, on her return from spending Easter in Pa^s. “ But when
ivc think she has everything she can possibly wj^ for, that when
she goes down Iho Bois really nobody else is looked at, that ho has
actually bought the Pioc’s egg for her — really, really,! it is flying in
the face of Providence for her not to bo happier than she is. I am
sure if at her ago I might have spent ten thousand pounds a season

MOTHS. 165

on my ffowns, I should have boon in heaven if they had manied me
toaCaffre”

“I never think you did your dear child justice,” said Lady Stoat
gently. ‘‘No, I must say you never did. She is very steadfast,
you know, and quite out of the common, and not in the least vulgar.
Now, if you won't mind my saying it, — because I am sure you do
yourself, but then you are such a dear, enjouecy good-natured
little creature that you accommodate yourself to anything— to
enjoy the present generation one must bo a little vulgar. I arn an
old woman, you know, and look on and see things, and the whole
note of this thing is vulgar even when it is c.t its very best. It has
been so ever since the Second Empire.”

“The dear Second Empire; you never were just to it,” said
Lady Dolly, with the tears almost rising to her eyes at the thought
of all she had used to enjoy in it.

“It was the a})othcosis of the vulgar; of the sort of Hague and
shamelessness which made De Morny put an ITortensia on his car-
riage panels,” said Lady Stoat calmly. “ To have that sort of epoch
in an age is like having skunk fur on your clothes ; the taint never
goes away, and it even gets on to youi* lace and your cachemircs. I
am afraid our grandchildren will smell the Second Ernpird far away
into the twentieth century, and bo the worse for it,”

“ I/larc say there will have been a Fourth and a Fifth by
then.”

“ Collapsed windbags, I dare say. The richest soil always bears
the rankest mushrooms. France is always bearing mushrooms. It
is a pit3\ But what 1 meant was that your Vero has not got the
taint of it at all ; I fancy she scarcely cares at all about that I'ainous
diamond unless it be for its historical associations. I am quite sure
she doesn't enjoy being stared at ; and I think she very heartily
dislikes having her beauty writterx about in newspapers, as if she
were a mare of Lord h’almouth’s or a cow of Lady Pigott's ; she is
not Second Empire, that's all.”

“ Then you mean to say 1 am vulgar 1 ” said Lady Dolljq with
some tartness.

Lady Stoat smiled, a deprecating smile, that disarmed all suf-
ferers, who without it might have resented her honeyed cruelties.

“ My dear 1 I never say rude things ; but, if you wish mo to
he sincere, I confess I think everybody is a little vulgar now, except
old women like me, who adhered to the Faubourg ^vhile you all were
dancing and changing your dresses seven times a day at St. Cloud.
There is a sort of vulgarity in the air; it is difficult to escape im-
bibing it ; there is too little reticence, there is too much tearing
about; men are not well-mannered, .and women are too solicitous
to please, and too indilferent how far they stoop in pleasing. It
may be the fault of steam ; it may be the fault of smoking ; it
may come from that flood of new people of whom ‘ L'Ktrang^re ’
is the scarcely exaggeratpd sample ; but, whatever it comes from,

166

MOTHS.

there it is — b. vulgarity that taints everything, Courts and cabinets
as well as society. Your daughter somehow 6: other has escaped
it, and so you find her odd, and the world thinks her stiff. She is
neither ; but no dignified long-descended point-lace, you know, will
ever let itself ho twisted and twirled into a cascade and a fouillis
like your Jlrctonne lace that is just the fashion of tlie hour, and
worth nothing. I admire your Vera very greatly ; she always makes
me think of those dear old stately hotels with their grand gardens
in w'hich I saw, in my girlhood, the women who, in theirs, had
known France before *30. Those hotels and their gardens are gone,
most of them, and there are stucco and gilt paint in their places.
And there are people who think that a gain. 1 am not one of tliem.’*

“My sweetest Adine,” said Vere*s mother pettishly, “if you
admire my child so much, why did you persuade her to marry
Sergius Zouroff ? **

“ To please you, dear,” said Lady Stoat with a glance that
cowed Lady Dolly. “ I thought she would adorn the position ;
she does adorn it. It is good to see a gentlewoman of the old typ(j
in a high place, especially when she is young. When we are older,
they don’t listen much ; they throw against us the laudator tenqmi
actif — they think we are disappointed or ernbil tered. It is good to
see a young woman to whom men still have to bow, as they bow
to queens, and before whom they do not dare to talk the langae
verte. She ought to have a gi'cat deal of influence.”

“She has none; none whatever. She never will have any,”
said Lady Dolly, with a sort of triumph, and added, with the
sagacity that sometimes shines out in silly people — “You novcjr
influence people if you don’t like the things they like ; you always
look what the boys call a prig. Women hate Vere, perfectly hate
her, and yet I am quite sure she never did anything to any one of
them ; for, in her cold way, she is very good-natured. But then
she spoils her kind things ; the way she docs them annoys people.
I.ast winter, while she was at Nice, Olga Zwctchine — you know
her, the handsome one, her husband was in the embassy over here
sometime ago — utterly ruined herself at play, pledged everything
she possessed, and was desperate ; she had borrowed heaven knows
what, and lost it all. She went and told Vera. Vera gavo her a
heap of money sans se faire prier, and then ran her pen through
the Zwetchine’s name on her visiting list. Zouroff was furious.
‘ Let the woman he ruined,* he said, ‘ what was it to you ; but go
on receiving her ; she is an ox-ambassadress ; she will hate you all
your life.* Now what do you call that ? **

“ My friends of the old Faubourg would have done the same,”
said Lady Stoat, “ only they would have done it without giving
the money.”

“ I can’t imagine why she did give it,” said Lady Dolly. “ I
believe she would give to anybody — to Noisette herself, if the
creature were in want.”

MOTHS.

1G7

“ She probably knows nothing at all about Noisette.”

. Oh yes, she docs. For the Zwctchine, as soon as she had got
the money Jide, wrt^to all about that woman to her, and every other
horrid thing she could think of too, to show her gratitude, she said.
Gratitude is always such an unpleasant quality, you know ; there
is always a grudge behind it.” •

“ And what did she say, or do about Noisette ? ”

“Nothing; nothing at all. I should never have heard of it,
only she tore the Zwetciiiuc letters up, and her maid collected them
and pieced them together, and told my maid; you know what maid 3
are. I never have any confidence from Vera. I should never dare
to say a syllable to her.”

“Very wise of her; very dignified, not to make a scene. So
unlike people fiowada 5 's, loo, when they all seem to tldnk it a
positive pleasure to get into the law-courts and newspapers.'*

“ No ; she didn't do anything. And now I come to think of
it,” said Lady Dolly, with a sudden inspiration towards truth fulness,
“ she struck off the Zwetchinc's name after that letter, very liicely ;
and I dare say never told Zouroff she had had it, for she is very
proud, and very silent, dreadfully so.”

“ vSho seems to me very sensible,” .said Lady Stoat. “I wish
my Gwendolen were like her. It is all I can do to keep her from
rushing to the lawyers about Lirk.”

Vera is ice,” said Lady Dolly.

“And how desirable tliat is; bow f^afel ” said Lady Stoat, with
a sigh of envy and self-pity, for licr daughter, Lady Dirk(niliead,
gave her trouble despite the perfect education tliat daughter had
rccciv(;d.

“Certainly safe, so long as it lasts, l>ut not at all popular,” said
Lady Dully, with some impatience. “Tlujy call her the Edelweiss
in Paris. Of course it means that she is quite inaccessible. If she
were inaccessible in the riyht way, it might be all very well, though
tlio time's gone hy fur it, and it’s always stiff, and nobody is stiff
nowadays; still, it might answer if she were only just exclusive
and not — not — so ver}'^ rude all round.”

“ 8he is never rude ; she is cold.”

“ It comes to the same tiling,” said Lady Dolly, v.dio hated to
be contradicted. “ l^lver^’^body sees that they bore her, and peoide
liate you if they think they bore you; it isn't tliat they care about
you, but they fancy you find them stupid. Now, isn't the most
popular woman in all Europe that creature I detest, Fuschia Mull?
Will you tell ino anybody so jiraised, so potted, so souglit after, so
raved about? Because she’s a duchess? Oh, my love, no ! You
may be a duchess, and you may be a nobody outside your owu
county, just as that horrid old 'cat up at Buhner has always been.
Oh, that has nothing to do with it. She is so popular because
overybod/ delights her, and everything is fun to her. She’s as'
sharp as a needle, but she’s as gay as a lark. I hate her, but you

168

MOTHS.

can’t be dull where she is. You know the Prince always calls her
* Pick-me-up.’ At that fancy fair for the poor 'J.Vallacks — whoever
the poor Wallacks may be — the whole world was there. Vera had
a stall, she loaded it with beautiful things, things much too good,
and sat by it, looking like a very grand portrait of Mignard’s. She
was superb, exquisite, and she had a bowser of orchids, and a carved
ivory chair from Hindostan. Peoide flocked up by the hundreds,
called out about her beauty, and — ^went away. She looked so still,
so tired, so contemptuous. A very little way off was Fiischia Mull,
selling vile tea and tea-cakes, and two]x;nny cigarettes. My dear,
the whole world surged round that stall as if it were mad. Certainly
she had a lovely Louis Treize hat on, and a delicious dress, gold
brocade with a violet velvet long waistcoat. Her execrable tea sold
for a sovereign a cup, and when she kissed her cigarettes they went
for five pounds each! ZourolT went up and told his wife: *A
brioche there fetches more than your Saxe, and your Sevres, and
your orchids,’ he said. ' You don’t tempt the people, you frighten
them.* ^hen Vera looked at him with that way — she has such a
freezing way — and only said: ‘Would you wish me to kiss the
orchids?’ Zouroff laughed. ‘Well, no; you don’t do for this
thing, I see ; you don’t know how to make yourself cheap.’ Now
I think he hit exactly on what I mean. To be liked nowadays
you must make yourself cheap. If you want to sell your cigar you
must kiss it.”

“ But suppose she has no cigars sho wants to sell ?”

“ You mean she has a great position, and need care for nobody ?
That is all very well. But if she ever come to grief, see how they
will turn and take it out of her I ”

“ I never said sho was wise not to be polite,” pleaded Lady
Stoat. “But as to ‘coming to grief,’ as you say, that is impossible.
She will always sit in that ivory chair.”

“ I dare say ; but one never knows, and she is odd. If any day
sho get very angry with Zouroff, sho is the sort of temper to go out
of his house in her shift, and leave everything behind her.”

“ What a picture 1 ” said Lady Stoat, with a shudder.

Nothing appalled Lady Stoat like the idea- of any one being
wrought upon to do anything violent. She would never admit that
there could ever bo any reason for it, or excuse.

She had been an admirable wife to a bad husband herself, and
she could not conceive any woman not. considering her position
before all such pettier matters as emotions and wrongs.

When her daughter, who was of an impetuous disposition, which
even the perfect training she had received had not subdued, would
come to her in rage and tears because of the drunkenness or because
of the open infidelities of the titled Tony Lumpkin that she had
wedded, Lady Stoat soothed her, but hardly sympathised, “Lead
your own life, my love, and don’t worry,” sho would say. “ Nothing
can unmake your position, and no one, except yourself.” When

MOTES.

169

her daughter passionately protested that position was not all that
a woman wanted aLtwenty years old and with a heart not all trained
out of her, Lady Stoat would feel seriously annoyed and injured.
“ You forget your position," she would reply. “ 1 ’ray, pray do not
jeo])ardise your position. Let your husband go to music-halls and
creatures if ho must; it is very" sad, certainly, very sad. But it
only hurts him ; it cannot affect your position,” Farther than that
the light she possessed could not take her.

She would not have been disposed to quarrel with the Princess
Zouroir, as her own mother did, for not playing the fool at fancy
fairs, but she would have thought it horrible, inexcusable, if, under
the pressure of any wrong, the affront of infidelity, she liad— -in
Lady Dolly’s figure of sj)cech — left her husband’s house in her shift.

“ Never lose your position,” would have been the text that Lady
Stoat would have had written in letters of gold, for all young wives
to read, and it was the text on which all her sermons were preached.

Position was the only thing that, like old wine or oak furniture,
improved with years, if you had a good position at twenty, at
forty you might bo a jjower in the land. What else would wear
like that? Not love, certainly, which indeed at all times Lady
8toat was disposed to regard as a malady; a green sickness, inevi-
table, but, to onlookers, very irritating in its delirious nonsense.

It was neither mere rank nor mere riches that Lady Stoat con-
sidered a great i>osition. It was the combination of both, with a
power — inalienable except by your own act — to give the tone to
those around you ; to exclude all who did not accord with your own
notions ; to be unattainable, untroubled, unruffled ; to be a great
exami)le to society ; metaphorically to move through life with carpet
always unrolled before your steps. When you had a position that
gave you all this, if you had tact and talent enough to avail yourself
of it, what could you by any possibility need more?

Yet her own daughter, and her friend’s daughter, had this and
both were dissatisfied.

Her own daughter, to her anguish unspeakable, revolted openly
and grew vulgar; even grew vulgar; went on the boxes of the
four-in-hand-men’s coaches, shot and hunted, played in amateur
IKjrformances before Loudon audiences far from choice ; had even
been seen at the Crystal Palace; had loud” costumes with won-
derful waistcoats ; and had always a crowd of young men wherever
she went. Lady Stoat honestly would sooner have seen her in her
grave.

The Princess Zouroff, who had the very perfection of manner
even if she offended peoide, who knew of her husband’s infidelities
and said nothing, went coldly and serenely through the world,
taking no pleasure in it perhaps, but giving it no power to breathe
a breath against her.

“ Why was she not my child ! " sighed Lady Stoat sadly.

If Lady Stoat could have seen into the soul of Vere, she would

170

MOTHS.

have found as little there with which she coukh have sympathised
as she found in her own daughter’s tastes for Jlie stage, the drag,
and the loud waistcoats. ^

She could not imagine the price at which Vere’s composure was
attained ; the cost at wliich that perfect manner, which she admired,
was kept unruffled by a sigh or frown. She could not tell that this
young life was one of perpetual suffering, of exhausting effort to
keep hold on the old iaiths and the old principles of childhood
amidst a world which has cast out faith as old>fasliioiicd and foolisli,
and regards a princiide as an aCfroiit and an ill-nature. Her own
society found the young Princess Vera very cold, unsympathetic,
strange ; she \vas chill about fashionable good woi'ks, and her grand
eyes had a look in them, stern in its sadness, which frightened
away both courtiers and enemies. The verdict upon her was that
she Wits iman liable.

The world did not understand her.

“ The poor you have always with you,” had been an injunction
that, in the days of her childhood, she had been taught to hold
sacred.

“ The poor you have always with yon,” she said to a bevy of
great ladies once. “ Christ said so. You ])rofcss to follow Christ.
How have you the poor with you? The back of th(3ir garret, tlic
roof of tlicir lu)vcl, touches the wall of your iialaco, and the wall is
thick. You have dissipations, spectacles, div’orsions that you call
charities; you have a tombola for a famine, you have a dramatic
performance for a flood, you have a concert fur a fire, you have a
fancy fair for a leprosy. Do you never think how horrible it is,
that mockery of woe ? Do you ever wonder at rcvolutiuiis ? Why
do you not say honestly that you care nothing? You do care
nothing. The ])Oor might forgive the avowal of indifference ; they
will never forgive the insult of affected pity.”

Then the ladies who heard were scandalised, and wont to their
priests and were comforted, and w'oiild not have this young saint
preach to them as Chrysostom preached to the ladies of Coiistanti-
nople.

But Vere had been reared in tender thoughtfulness for the pour.
Her grandmother, stern to all others, to the poor was tender.

“ Put your second frock on for the Queen, if you like,” sh.o
\vo\ild say to the child ; but to the poor go in your best clothes
or they will feel hurt.”' Vero never forgot wfflat was meant in
that bidding. Cliarity in various guises is an intruder the poor see
often ; hut courtesy and delicacy are visitants with which they arc
seldom honoured.

It is very difficult for a woman who is young and very rich not
to be deceived very often, and many an impostor, no doubt, played
his tricks upon her. But she was 'clear-sighted and much in
earnest, and found many wfflo.se needs were terrible, and whose
lives were noble. The poor of Paris are suspicious, resentful, and

MOTES.

171

apt to be sullen* in their independence; but they are often also
scripus and intelligent, terrder of heart, and gay of spirit. Some of
them she grew to care for very much, and many of them forgave
her for being an aristocrat, and welcomed her for her loveliness and
her sympathy. As for herself,, she sometimes felt that the only
reality life had for her was when she went up to those dnrup chill
attics ill the metal roofs, and spoke with those whose bread was
bitterness and whoso cup was sorrow. Her husband, with soiiuj
contempt, told her she grew like Saint JHizabeth of Thuringia, but
be did not forbid her doing as slio pleased. If she were iiresent to
drive in the Bois, or ride there before sunset, and afterwards wont
to dinner, or ball, or reception, as the engagements of the nigljt
might require, he did not exact any more account of her lime or
ask how her mornings were spent. ^

''You leave Vera too much alone, terribly too much,” said his
sister to him once.

lie stared, then laughed.

“Alone? a woman of her rank is never alone. Not a whit
more than queens arc ! ”

“ I mean you are not with her ; you never ask what she docs all
the day.”

“J suppose her early hours are given to her tailor and her
milliner, and the later ones to morning visits,” he answered witli a
yawn. “ It docs not matter wdiat she does. She is a fool in many
tilings, but she will nut abuse liberty.”

Tor, though ho had never believed in any woman, he did
believe in his wife.

“ She wili not abuse it yet ; no,” thought Madame Nelagiiiiie.
“ No, not yet, whilst she is still under the influence of her childish
faiths and her fear of God. But after? — after five, six, seven years
of the world, of this world into which you have cast her without
any armour of love to protect her — how will it be then ? It will
not be men’s fault if she misuse her liberty ; and assuredly it
will not be women’s. Wo corru];)t eacli other more than men
corrupt us.”

Aloud the Princess Nciaguine merely said, “ You allow her to
he friends with Jeanne de Sonnaz ? ”

Zoiiroff laughed again and frowned.

“All women in the same set sco one another day and niglit.
Who is to help that? ”

« But ”

“ Be reasonable,” he said roughly. “ ITow can I say to my
wife, 'Do not receive the Duchesso de Soimaz.’ All Paris would
he convulsed, and Jeanne herself a demoniac. Good heavens !
Where do you get all these new scruples ? Is it your contact with
Vera?”

“ Your contact with her does not teach them to you,” said his
sister coldly, “ Oh, our world is vile enough, that I know vr'^^ .

172

MOTHS.

but somewhero or other I think it might keep a ‘■little conscience,
lor exceptional circumstances, and so might yo\u*'

“ Do not talk nonsense. I cannot tell Jeanne not to know my
wile, or my wife not to know Jeanne. They must take their
chance ; there is nothing exceptional ; every man docs the same.’^

“ Yes ; we are very indecent,” said Madame Nclaguine quietly.
“ We do not admit it, but we are.”

Her brother shrugged his shoulders to express at once acquies-
cence and indifference.

In one of the visits that her charities led bis wife to make she
she lieard one day a thing that touched her deeply. Her horses
knocked down a girl of filtcen who W’as crossing the Avenue dii
Dois de Bologne. The girl Avas not hurt, though frightened. She
was taken into the Hotel Zoiiroff, and Vere returned to the house to
attend to her. As it proved, the child, when the faintness of her
terror had passed, declared herself only a little bruised, smiled and
thanked her, and said she would go homo ; she wanted nothing.
She was a freckled, ugly, bright-looking little thing, and was
carrying some of those artificial flowers Avith Avhich so many girls
of Paris gain their daily bread. Her name was Felicio Martin, and
she was the only cliild of her father, and her mother Avas dead.

The following day the quiet little coupe that took Vere on her
morning errands, found its way into a narrow but decent street in
the Batignollcs, and the Princess Zouroff inquired for the Sietir
Martin.

Vere bade her men Avait beloAv, and went up the stairs to the
third floor. The house Avas neat, and was let to respectable people
of the higher class of workers. In her own Avorld she Avas very
proud, but it Avas not the pride that offends the AA^orking classes,
because it is dignity and not arrogance, and is simple and natural,
thinking nothing of rank though much of race, and far more still ol
character.

“May I come in?” she said in her clear voice, AA’hich had
always so sad an accent in it, but for the poor A\\as never cold.
“ Will you allow me to make myself quite sure that your daughter
is none the Avorse for that accident, and tell you myself how very
sorry I was ? Kussian coachmen are always so reckless.”

“ But, madame, it is too much honour!” said a little, fair man
who rose on her entrance, but did not move forward. “ Forgive me,
madame, you are as beautiful as you are good ; so I have heard
' from my child, but alas ! 1 cannot have the joy to see such sunlight
in my room. Madame will pardon me — I am blind.”

“ Blind ? ” — the Avord always strikes a chill to those who hear
it ; it is not a very rare calamity, but it is the one of all others
which most touches bystanders, and is most quickly realised. He was
a happy-looking little man, neverLhelcss, though his blue eyes were
without light in theirf gaaing into space unconsciously ; the room
was clean, and gay, and sweet-smelling, with some pretty vases

MOTHS, 173

and prints aud other simple ornaments, and in the casement some
geraniums and hciiotroiic.

** Yes, I am blind,” lio said clieerfiilly, “ Will Madame la
Princcsso kindly be seated ? My child is at her workshop. She
will be so glad and proud. Bho has talked of nothing but madamc>
ever since yesterdny. Madanio’s beauty, madame’s goodness ah
yes, the mercy of it ! I am always afraid for my child in the
streets, but she is not afraid for herself ; she is little, but she is
brave. It is too much kindness for IMadame la Princesse to have
come up all this height, but madamc is good ; one hears it in her
voice. Yes, my child makes flowers for the great Maison Justine.
Our angel did that for us. Bhc is my only child, yes. Her dear
mother died at her birth. 1 was fourth clarionet at the Opera
C-omique at that time.”

“ Put you can play still ? ” ♦ *

“Ah no, madamc. My right arm is paralysed. It was cne
day ill the forest at Yiucennes. Fclicio was ten yesrs old. I
thought to give her a Sunday in the wood. It was in May. We
were very happy, she and I running after one another, and pulling
the hawthorn when no one lo(>ked. All in a moment a great storm
came up and hurst over us where we were in the midst of the great
trees. The lightning struck my eyes and my right shoulder. Ah,
the poor, poor child! . , . But madamo must excuse me; I am
tiresome ”

“It interests me ; go on.”

“I fell into great misery, madamc. That is all. No hospital
could help me. The sight was gone, and my power to use my
right arm was gone too. I could not even play my clarionet in the
streets as blind men do. I had saved a little, but not much.
Musicians do not save, any more than painters. I had never earned
very much either. I grew very very poor. I began to despair. I
had to leave my lodging, my j)retiy little rooms where the child
was horn and where my wife had died ; I went lower and lower, I
grew more and more wretched ; a blind, useless man with a little
daughter. And I had no friends ; no one ; because, myself, I came
from Alsace, and the brother I had there was dead, and our parents
too had been dead long, long before; they had been farmers.
IMadamc, I saw no hope at all. 1 had not a hope on earth, and
h'elieio was such a little thing she could do nothing. But I fatigui
madam ? ”

“ Indeed no. Pray go on, and tell me how it is that you arc so
tranquil now.”

^ “ I am more than tranquil ; I am happy. Princess. That is his
doing. My old employers all forgot me. They liad so much to
think of; it was natural. I was nobody. There were hundreds
and thousands could play as I had ever played. One day

when I was standing in the cold, hungry, with my little gir?
hungry too, I heard them saying how the young singer Oorreze had

i/oms.

17'i

been engaged at fifty iliousand francs a night for the season. I
went homo and I made the child write a letter 4 "o the young man.
I told him what had happened to me, and I said, ‘ You are young
and famous, and gold rains on you like dew in midsummer ; will
you remember that we are very wretched ? If you said a word to
my old directors — you — they would think of me.’ I sent the letter
I had often played in the orchestra when the young man was first
turning the heads of all Paris. I know ho was gay and careless ;
I had not much hope.”

“Well?” Her voice had grown soft and eager; the man was
blind, and could not sec the flush upon her face.

“ Well, a day or two went by, and I thought the letter was
gone in the dust. ^J'hon he came to me, he himself, Correze. I
knew his perfect voice as I heard it on the stairs. You can never
forget it once you have heard. He had a secretary even then, but
he had not left my letter to the secretary. Ho came like the angel
llaphacl whose name he hears.”

Yore’s eyes filled ; she thought of the white cliffs by the sea, of
the sweetbriar hedge, and the song of the thrush.

“ But I tire madaino,” said the blind man. “ He came like an
angel. There is no more to be said. He made believe to get me a
pension from the opera, but I have always thought that it is his
own money, though lie will not own to it; and as my child liad a
talent for flower-making he had her taught the trade, and got her
employed later ou by Che Maison Justine. He sent me that china,
and ho sends me those flowers, and ho comes sometimes himself.
Ho has sung here — here I — only just to make my darkness lighter.
And I am not the only one, madame. There are, many, many,
many who, if they ever say their prayers, should never forgot
Correze.”

Vero w^as silent, because her voice failed her,

“ You have heard Correze, madame, of course, many times ? ”
asked the blind man. “Ah, they say he has no religion and is
CJireless as the butterflies arc: to me he has been as the angels. I
should have been in Bicetre or in my grave but for him.”

Tlie girl at that moment entered.

“Fclicie,” said the Sicur Martin, “give the Princess a piece of
heliotrope. Oh, she has forests of heliotrope in her conservatories,
that I am sure, but she will accept it ; it is the flower of C'orreze.”

Vere took it and put it amidst the old lace at her breast.

"You have Fclicie Martin amongst your girls, I think?” said
Vero to the head of the Maison Justine a little later.

The i^rincipal of that fashionable house, a handsome and clever
woman, assented.

" Then let her make some flowers for me,” added Yerc. “ Any
flowers will do. Only will you permit mo to pay her through you
. very well for them ; much better for them than they arc worth ? ”

“ Madame la Princesse,” said the other with a smile, “ the little

MOTHS.

175

Martin cainiut mal;c sucli flowers as you would wear. I employ
her, but I never us% her flowers, never. I have to deceive her ; it
would break her heart if she knew that I burn them all, !J'ho poor
child is willing, but she is very clulns 5 ^ She cannot help it.
Madame will understand it is a -secret of my house ; a very little
liarmless secret, like a little mouse. Correze — madainc knows whom
I mean, the great singer ? — Corrtize came to me one day with his
wonderful smile, and he said, ‘ There is a blind man and he has a
little girl who wants to make flowers. Will you have her taught,
madame, and allow me to" pay for her lessons ? ’ 1 allowed him. Six
months afterwards I said, ‘ M. Correze, it is all of no use. The
child is clumsy. When once they have fingers like hers it is of no
use.’ Then he lauglied. *lt ought to bo diflicult to make artificial
flowers. I wish it wore impossible. It is a blasphemy. T5ut d want
to make the girl believe she earns money. AVill you employ
her, burn the flowers, and draw tlie money from my account at
Kothscliild’s ? ’ And I did it to please him and 1 do it still ; poor
little clumsy ugly thing that she is, she fancies she works for the
Maisoii Justine ! It is compromising to me. I said so to M. Gorreze.
Ho laughed and said to me, “ Ma cJiGrCf when it is a question of a
blind man and a child wo must even ho compromised, which, no
doubt, is very terrible.’ He is always so gay, M, Correze, and so
good. If tli(j child were Venus ho would nev('r take advantage of
maintaining her, never, madame. Ah, he is an angel, that beauti-
ful Correze. And lie can laugh like a boy ; it docs one good to hear
his laugh. It is so sweet. My poor Justine used to say to me,
Marie, h^qiGcriics weep, and you cannot tell their tears from those
of saints ; but no bad man ever laughed sweetly yet.’ And it is
true, very true ; Madame la Princesse will forgive my garrulity.”

When she went down to her carriage the world did not seem so
dark.

There was beauty in it, as there were those flowers blooming in
that common street. The little picture of the father and daughter,
serene and joyous in their humble chamber, in llic midst of the
gay, wild, ferocious riot of Paris, seemed like a little root of daisies
blooming white amidst a battle-field.

That night she went to her box at the Grand 0])cra, and sat as
fvr in the shadow as she could and listened to Coneze in the part
of Gennaro.

He docs not forget that blind man,” she thought. “ Docs ho
ever remember me ? ”

For she could never tell.

From the time she had entered Paris she had longed, yet dreaded,
to meet, face to face, Correze.

She saw him constantly in the street, in the Bois, in society,
but he never approached her ; she never once could be even sure
that he recognised or remembered -her. She heard people say that
Correze was more difficult of access, more disinclined to accept tl.a

176

MOTES.

worship of society, tliaii be had been before, but she could Bot tell
what his motive might be ; she could not beliep'o that sh^ had any
share in his thoughts. His eyes never once met hers but what they
glanced away again rapidly, and without any gleam of recognition.
Again and again in those great salons whore lie was a petted idol,
she was close beside him, but she could never tell that he rcmein-
bored her. rerhaps liis life was so full, she thought ; after all, what
was one summer morning tliat he should cherish its memory ?

Often in the conversations that went on around her, she heard
his successes, his inconstancies, his passions of the past, slight or
great, alluded to, laughed over, or begrudged. Often, also, she heard
of other things ; of some great generosity to a rival, some great aid
to an aspirant of liis art, some magnificent gift to a college made by
the famous singer. Or, on the other hand, of some captiousness as
of a too spoilt child, some wayward caprice shown to the })owers of
the State by the powers of genius, some brilliant lavishness of en-
tertainment or of fancy. When she heard these things her heart
would beat, her colour would change ; they hurt her, she could not
have told why.

Meantime the one solace of her life was to see his genius and its
triumphs, its plenitude and its perfect flower. Her box at the
Grand Ojicra was the only one of the privileges of her position
which gave her pleasure. Her knowledge of music was deep and
had hcon carefully cultured, and her well-known love for it made
her devotion to the opera jiass unremarked. Seldom' could the
many engagements made for her let her hear any one oj^era from its
overture to the close. But feAV niglits passed without her being in
her place, sitting as flxr in the shadow as she could, to hear at least
one act or more of “ Bidelio,” of Lucia,** of the “ l*rophcte,” of the
“ Zauhcrfldtc,” of “Faust,” or of the “ II Trovatoi c.’* She never knew
or guessed that the singer watched for her fair-haired head amidst
the crowded house, as a lover watches for the rising of the evening
planet that shall light him to his love.

She saw him in the distance a dozen times a week, she saw him,
not seldom, at the receptions of great houses, hut she jicver was
near enough to him to be sure whetiicr ho had really forgotten her,
or whether he had only aflected oblivion.

CoiTeze, for his own part, avoided society as much as he could,
and alleged that to sing twice or three times a week was as much
as his strength would allow him to do, if he wished to be honest
and give his best to his impresario. But he was too popular, too
much missed when absent, and too great a favourite with greaV
ladies to find retirement in the midst of Paris possible. So that,
again and again, it was his fortune to see the child he had sung to
on the Norman cliffs announced to the titled crowds as Madame la
Princesse Zouroff. It always hurt him. On the other hand ho was
always glad when, half-hidden behind some huge fan or gigantic
bouquet, he could sec the fair bead of Vero in the opera-house.

M0TII8.

Ill

When lie sang* he sang to her.

“How is it yo’ii do not know Princess Vera?” said many of
his friends to him ; fur lie never asked to he presented to her.

“ I think sIjc would not care to know an artist,” he would s«^y.
“ Why should she? She is at tlm height of fame and fortune, and
charm and beauty ; what would she want with the homage of a
singing-mime ? She is very exquisite ; but you know I have my
pride ; la •prdbito des pauvres, et la grandeur des rois ; I never risk
a rebuff.”

And ho said it so lightly that his friends believed him, and
believed tliat he had a fit of that reserve which very often made
liiin haughtier and more diflicult to persuade than any Eoi Soleil
of the lyric stage had ever been. 4

“I am very shy,” lie \vould say sometimes, and everybody
would laugh at him. Yet, in a way, it was true; ho had many
sensitive fancies, and all in his temperament that w'as tender,
sjiiritual, and romantic had centred itself in that innocent emotion
which liad never been love, which was as fantastic as Dante^s, and
almost as baseless as Keats’s, and was therefore all the more dear to
him b(‘causc so unlike the too easy and too material passions which
had been his portion in youth.

“ It can do her no harm,” he W'ould think, “ and it goes with
me like the angel that the poets write of, tluit keeps the door of
the soul.”

It W'as a phantasy, ho told himself, but then the natural food of
artists w^as phantasies of all kinds ; and so this tenderness, this
regret, went with him always through the gay motley of his
changeful days, as the golden curl of some lost love, or some dead
cliild, may lie next the heart of a man all the while that he laughs
and talks, and dines, and drives, and jests, and yawns in the midst
of the world.

“ ft can do her no harm,” he said, and so he never lot his eyes
meet hers, and she could never tell whether he ever remembered
that Vera Zouroff had once been Vere Herbert.

And the weeks and the months rolled on their course, and
Correze was alw^ays the Hoi Soleil of his time, and Vere became
yet of greater beauty, as her face and form reached their full per-
fection. Her portraits by great painters, her busts by gn'at
sculptors, her costumes by great artists, were the themes of the
public press ; the streets were filled to see her go by in the pleasure-
capital of the world ; amongst her diamonds the famous jewel of
of tragic memories and historic repute that was called the Roc’s
egg shone on her white breast as if she had plucked a planet from
the skies. No day passed but fresh treasures in old jewels, old
wares, old gold and silver, from the sales of the H6tel Drouot, were
poured into her rooms with all the delicate charm about them that
comes from history and tradition. Had she any whim, she could
indulge it ; any taste, she co\dd gratify it ; any fancy, she cor’d

178 MOTHS..

execute it ; and yet one day when she saw a nicture in the Salon
of a slave-girl standing with rope-hound wrists and fettered ankles,
amidst the lustrous stuffs and gems of the harem, surrounded by
the open coffers and glittering stones and chains of gold in which
her captors were about to array her nude and trembUiig limbs, she
looked long at it, and said to the master of oriental art who had
painted it, Did you need to go to the East for that ? ”

She bought the picture, and had it hung in her bedchamber in
Paris; where it looked strange and startling against the pink taffe-
tas, and the silver embroideries of the wall.

“ That is not in your usual good taste,' ^ said her husband,
finding that the painting ill agreed with the decorations of tlie
room.

Ve?e looked at him, and answered : “ It suits any one of my
rooms.**

He did not think enough of the matter to understand ; the
picture hung there amidst the silver Cupids, and the embroidered
apple^blossorns of the wall.

“A painful picture, a horrible picture, like all Geiume’s,’* said
her mother before it once,

A very cold smile came on Vcrc’s mouth.

“Yes,” she said simply, ‘"we have no degradation like that in
Europe, have we ? ”

Lady Dolly coloured, turned away, and asked if Fantin had
designed those charming wreaths of apple-blossoms and araorini.

But it was very seldom that the bitterness, and scorn, and
slrame that were in her found any such expression as in the pur-
chase of the Slave for the Harem.’* She was almost always quite
tranquil, and very patient under the heavy burden of lier days.

All the bitterness and humiliation of her heart she choked
down into silence, and she continued to live as she had done
hitherto, without sympathy and in an utter mental isolation. She
felt that all she had been taught to respect was ridiculous in the
eyes of those who surrounded her ; she saw all that she had been
accustomed to hold in horror as sin made subject for jest and for
intrigue ; she saw that all around her, whilst too polite to deride
the belief and the principles that guided her, yet regarded them as
the cobwebs and chimeraa of childhood ; she saw that the women of
her world, though they clung to priests, and, in a way, feared an
offended heaven— when they recollected it—yet were as absolutely
without moral fibre and mental cleanliness as any naked creatures
of Pacific isles sacrificing to their obscene gods. All that she saw :
but it did not change her.

She was faithful, not because his merit claimed it, hut because
her duty made such faith the only purity left to her. She was
loyal, not because his falseness was ever worthy of it, hut because
her nature would not let her be other than loyal to the meanest
-living that lived.

^MOTHB. 179

Chnstity was tf) her as honour to the gentleman, as courage to
the soldier. It wu's not a robe embroidered and worn for more
parade, and therefore easy to bo lifted in the dark by the first
audacious hand that ruffled it.

“ On se console toujours, we know,” her sister-in-law thought,
who watched her keenly. “ Still, there is an exception now and
then to that rule as to any other, and she is one of those excep-
tions. It is strange ; generally the great world is like aether, or
any other dram-drinking ; tasted once, it is sought for more and
more eagerly every time, and ends in becoming an indispensable
intoxication. But nothing intoxicates her, and so nothing consoles
her. 1 believe she does not care in the least for being one of the
very few perfectly lovely women in Europe. I believe her beauty
is almost distasteful and despicable to her, because it brought about
her bondage ; and although it is an exaggerated way of looking at
such things, she is right; she was bought, quite as barbarously as
Gcrome’s slave. Only were she anybody else she would be recon-
ciled by now — or bo revenged. The only time I ever see her look
in the least happy is at the opera, and there she seems as if sho
were dreaming ; and once, at Svir, when we were driving over the
plains in the snow, and they said the wolves were behind us — then
she looked for the moment all brilliancy and courage ; one would
have said she was willing to feel the wolves* breath on her throat.
But in the world* she is never like that. What other women find
excitement to her is monotony. Pleasure docs not i)lease her,
vanity does not exist in her, and intrigue docs not attract her ;
some day love will.” *

And then Madame Nelaguine would pull the little curls of her
3 )crruquc angrily and light her cigar, and sit down to the piano and
compose her nerves with Chopin.

“As for Sergius, he deserves nothing,” sho would mutter, as
she followed the dreamy intricate melodics of the great master.

But then it was not for her to admit that to any one, and much
less was it for her to admit it to his wife. Like most great ladies,
she thought little of a sin, but ^he had a keen horror of a scandal,
and she was afraid of the future, very afraid of it.

“ If she were not a pearl what vengeance she would take ! ”
she thought again and again, when the excesses and indecencies of
her brother’s career reached her ears.

For sho forgot that she understood those as the one most out-
raged by them was very slow to do.

Vere still dwelt within the citadel of her own innocence, as
within the ivory walls of an enchanted fortress. Little by liltle
the corruption of life flowed in to her and surrounded her like a
foetid moat, but, though it approached her it did not touch her, and
often she did not even know that it was near. What she did per-
ceive filled her with a great disgust, and her husband laughed at
her.

180

MOTHS.

In these short months of her life in Paris slie'felt as though she
had lived through centuries. Ten years in the^old grey solitude of
Bulmer would not have aged her morally and mentally as these
brief months of the riot of society had done. She liad drunk of
the cup of knowledge of good and of evil, and, though she had drunk
with sinless lips, she could not entirely escape the poison the cup
held.

She hated the sin of the world, she hated the sensuality, the
intrigue, the folly, the insincerity, the callousness of the life oi’
society, yet the knowledge of it was alwaj^s with her like a bitter
taste in the mouth.

It hurt her unceasingly ; it aged her like the passing of many
years.

In the beginning of the time she had tried to got some threads
of guidance, some words of counsel, from the man who was her
husband, and who knew the world so well. The answers of Sergius
Zourotf left her with a heavier heart and a more bitter taste. Tlie
chill cynicism, the brutal grossness of his experiences, tore and hurt
the delicate fibres of her moral being, as the poisons and the knife
of the vivisector tear and burn the sensitive nerves of the living
organism that they mutilate.

Ho did not intend to hurt her, but it seemed to him that her
ignorance made he]* ridiculous. He pulled down the veils and
mufflers in which the vices of society mask themselves, and was
amused to see her shrink from the nude deformity.

His rough, bold temper had only one weakness in it : he had a
nervous dread of being made to look absurd. He thought the
innocence and coldness of Vere made him look so.-

" They will take mo for a rmri amoureux*^ he thought ; and
Madame de Sonnaz laughed, and told him the same thing fifty
times a week, lie began to grow impatient of his wife^s uncon-
sciousness of all that wont on around her, and enlightened her
without scruple.

He sat by her, and laughed at Judic and at Th6o, and was angry
with her that she looked grave and did not laugh ; he threw the
last new sensation in realistic literature on to her table, and hade
lier read it, or she would look like a fool when others talked.
When a royal prince praised her too warmly, and she resented it,
he was annoyed with her. “ You dp not know how to take the
world,” ho said impatiently. “ It is n’lyself that you make ridi-
culous ; I do not aspire to be thought the jealous husband of the
theatres, running about with a candle and crying aux voleurs ! ”

When she came to know of the vices of certain great ladies
who led the fashion and the world, she asked him if what was said
were true.

He laughed.

“ Quite true, and a great deal that is never said, and that is
^rse, is as true too.”

MOTHS.

181

And you wi^h me to know them, to be friends with them ? ”
she asked in her ignorance.

Uo swore a little, and gave her a contemptuous caress, as to a
dog that is importuning.

^‘Know them? Of course; you must always know them,
Tliey arc the leaders of society. What is their life to you or any-
body ? It is their husbands' affiiir. You must be careful as to
women’s position, but you need not trouble yourself about thei?
character.”

“ Then nothing that any one does, matters ? ”

Ho sliruggod his shoulders. *'It depends on how the world
takes it. You have a proverb in English about the man who may
steal a horse and the man who must not look at the halter. The
world is very capricious ; it often says nothing to the horsc-stealer,
it often i)illuries the person that looks at the halter. You are not
in it to redress its capiices. All you need be careful about is to
know the right persons.”

“The people that may steal the horses?” said Vero with the
faint, fine smile that had no mirth in it, and was too old for her
years ; the smile that alone had ever come on her lips since her
maiTingc.

“Tlic people' that may steal the horses,” said Zoiiroff with a
sliort laugh, not heeding her smile nor what seed his advice might
sow.

When ho had left her that day she wont into her bedchamber
and sat down before Gerome’a Slave for the Harem.”

“ The men of the East are better than these,” she thought.
“ The men of the East do veil their women and guard them.”

AVhat could he say, what reproach could ho make, if she learned
her lesson from his teaching, and learned it too well for his honour ?

A note was lying on her table from a great prince whom all
the world of women loved to praise, and languished to bo praised
by; a note written by himself, the first initiatory phrases of an
adoration that only asked one smile from her to become passion.
Such power of vengeance lay for her in it as there lies power of
destruction in the slender, jcwel-liko head of the snake.

She had only to write a word — name an hour — and Sergius
Zouroff would taste the fruit of his counsels.

The thought, which was not temptation because it was too cold,
glided into her mind, and, for the moment, looked almost sweet to
licr because it seemed so just — that sad, wild justice which is all
that any revenge can be at its best.

She took the note and let it lie on her lap ; the note that com-
promised a future king. She felt as if all her youth were dying in
her; as if she were growing hard, and cruel, and soulless. What
use were honour, and cleanliness, and dignity? Her husband
laughed at them ; the world laughed at them. Nothing raattored,
No one caved.

182

MOTHS,

The voice of one of her maids roused her, aslving, Is there any
answer from Madame to Monscigneur ? ” ^

Vere lifted her eyes, like one who wakes from a feverish sleep.
She pushed her hair back with a quick gesture and rose.

“ No ; none,” she answered curtly ; and she took the note, and
lighted a match, and burned it.

The slight cold smile came on her face.

“ After all,” she thought, " there is no merit in virtue, when sin
would disgust one. I suppose the world is right to be capricious in
its award. Since it is only a matter of temperament it is nothing
very great to be guiltless. If one like one’s soul clean, like one’s
hands, it is only a question of personal taste. There is no right
and no wrong — so they say.”

And her eyes filled, and her heart ^vas heavy ; for, to the young
and noble, there is no desert so dreary to traverse as the vast waste
of the world’s indifference. They would be strong to combat, they
would bo brave to resist, but in that sickly sea of sand they can
only faint and sink and cease to struggle.

It is harder to keep true to high laws and pure instincts in
modern society than it was in ixys of martyrdom. There is
nothing in the whole range of life so dispiriting and so unnerving
as a monotony of iiidifiereiice. Active persecution and fierce chas-
tisement arc tonics to tlio nerves ; but the mere weary conviction
that no one 'cares, that no one notices, that there is no humanity
that honours, and no deity that pities, is more destructive of all
higher effort than any conflict with tyranny or with barbarism.

Vere saw very well that if she stooped and touched the brink
of vice — if she lent her ear to amorous compliment that veiled
dishonour — if she brouglit herself to the level of the world she lived
in, women would love her hotter, and her husband honour her none
the less.

What would he care ?

Perhaps ho would not have accepted absolute dishonour, but all
the tem})iations that led to it ho let strew her path in all the
various guises of the times.

That night there was a great costume ball at one of the lega-
tions. It had been talked of for months, and was to be the most
brilliant thing of this kind that Paris had seen for many seasons.
All the tailors of fashion, and all th^ famous painters of the day,
had alike been pressed into the service of designing the most
correct dresKses of past epochs, and many dusty chronicles and
miniatures in vellum in old chateaux in the country, and old
libraries in tho city, had been disturbed, to yield information and
to decide disputes.

The Prince and Princess Zouroff were among the latest to
arrive. He wore the dress of his ancestor in the time of Ivan II., a
mass of sables and of jewels. She, by a whim of his own, was
•^Ulcd the Icc-spirit, and diamonds and rock crystals shone all

M0TII8.

183

over licr from to foot. Her cntranco was tlio sensation of
the evening; audV heard the exclamations that awarded her
the supreme place 'f beauty where half the loveliness of Europe had
been assembled, that vanity of possession which is the basest side
of passion revived in him, and made his sluggish pulses beat at
once with the miser’s and the spend tli rift’s pleasure.

“ Yes, you are right ; she is really very beautiful,” whispered
Jeanne de Sonnaz in his ear. “ To represent Ice it is not necessary
to have chieuj*

Zouroff frowned ; he was never pleased with being reminded of
things that he said liimself.

The duchesse herself had cliien enough for twenty women. She
called licrsek* a Sorceress, and was all in red, a brilliant, poppy-like,
tiame-like, Mephistoi)hclian red, with her famous rubies, and many
another jewel, winking like wicked little eyes all over her, Vhile a
narrow Venetian mask of black hid her ugliest features, and let her
blazing eyes destroy their worlds.

As a pageant the great ball was gorgeous and beautiful ; as a
t riumph few women ever knew one greater than that night was to
A^ere. Yet the hours wore tiresome to her. When her eyes had
once rested on the pretty picture that the splendid crowd composed,
she would willingly have gone away. She felt what the easterns
call an asp at her heart. The barrenness and loneliness of her life
weighed on her ; and it was not in her nature to find solace in
levity and consolation in homage. Others might do so and did do
so ; she could not.

** Madame, what can you want to be content ? ” said an old wit
to her. “ You have rendeied every man envious and every woman
unhappy. Surely that is a paradise for you, from which you can
look down smiling in scorn at our tears?”

Vero smiled, but not with scorn.

I should be sorry to think 1 made any one unhappy. As for
my success, as you call it, they stare at the diamonds, I think.
There are too many, perhaps.”

Madame, no one looks at your diamonds,” said the old beau.

There are diamonds enough elsewhere in the rooms to cover an
Indian temple. You are wilfully cruel. But ice never moved yet
for mortals.”

“ Am I really ice ? ” thought Vere, as she sat amidst the
changing groups that bent before her, and hung on her words. She
did not care for any of them.

They found her unusually beautiful, and thronged about her.
Another year it would be some one else ; some one i^robably utterly
unlike her, . What was the worth of that ?

There are tempers which turn restive before admiration, to
which flattery is tiresome, and to which a stare seems impertinence.
This was her temper, and the great world did not change it.

She moved slowly through the rooms with the Roc’s egg

184

MOTHS.

gleaming above her breasfc, and all the lesser stones seeming to
flash sunrays from snow as she moved, while l-ihe hold a fan of
white ostrich feathers between her and her worshippers, and her
train was upheld by two little De Sonnaz boys dressed as the pole-
star and the frost.

Her very silence, her defect usually to society, suited her beauty
and her name that night ; she seemed to have the stillness, the
mystery, the ethereality of the Arctic night.

“ One grows cold as you pass, madame,” whispered the great
prince whom she had not answered that day ; “ cold with despair.”

She made him a deep curtsey. She scarcely heard. Her eyes
had a misty brilliancy in them ; she had forgotten his letter. She
was wondering if her life would be always like this hall, a costly
and empty pageant — and nothing more.

Into the crowd there came at that moment a Venetian figure
with a lute. His clothes were coi)icd from those of the famous
fresco of Battista Zclotti ; he looked like Giorgione living once
more. Some great ladies, safe in the defence of their masks, were
pelting him with blossoms and bon-bons. He was laughing, and
defending himself with a gold caduccus that ho had stolen from a
friend who was a Mercury. Ho was surrounded by a maze of
colours and flowers and white arms. Ho was hurrying onward, but
a personage too great to be gainsaid or avoided called out to him as he
passed ; “My friend, what use is yonr lute since its chords arc silent?”

“ Mouseignour,” answered the Joueiir-du-luth, ‘Mike the singer
who bears it, it has a voice never dumb for yon.”

They were in a long gallery away from the ball-room ; the win-
dows opened on the lampiit garden ; the walls were tapestried ; figures
of archers and pages and ladies worked in all the bright fair colours
of the Gobelin looms ; there was a gilded cstrade that opened on to
a marble terrace, that in its turn led to lawns, cedar-circled, and
with little fountains springing up in the light and shadow.

The Venetian lute-player moved a little backward, and leaned
against the gilt railing, with his back to the garden and the sky.
lie touched a chord or two, sweet and far-reaching, seeming to bring
on their sigh all the sweet dead loves of the old dead ages. ^J’hen
he sang to a wild melody that came from the 'J'chigancs, and that
ho had learnt round their camp-fires on Hungarian plains at night,
while the troops of young horses had scoured by through the gloom,
affrighted by the flame and song. He -sang the short verse of
Heine, that has all the woo of two lives in eight lines :

Ein Fichtonbanm stelit einsam
Ira Norden auf kahlcr Htili’ :

Ibn schliifert ; mit weisscr Decko
UmhUllen ihn Eis und Sclincc.

Er traumt von eincr Palme,

Die fern im Morgenland
Einsam und schweigend traiicrt
Auf brennender Fclsenwand,

MOTHS. 385

As the fiivst noi^s touched the air, Vere looked for the first time
at the liitc-playcr-i»-she saw in him Correze. As for himself, he
had seen her all night ; had seen nothing else even while he had
laughed, and jested, and paid his court to others.

lie too had felt chill as she passed.

And ho sang the song of Heine; of the love of the pflm and the
pine. The royal prince had, with his own hands, silently pushed
a low chair towards Vere. She sat there and listened, with her face
to the singer and the illumined night.

It was a picture of Venice.

The lutC"pla 5 ’'er leaned against the golden balustrade; the silver
of falling water and shining clouds were behind him ; around
against the hues of the Gobelins stood the groups of maskers,
gorgeous and sombre as figures of the Renaissance. The distant
music of the ball-room sounded like tlie ccliocs of a far-oil‘ cliorus,
and did not disturb the melody of the song, that hushed all
laughter and all wliispers, and held the idlest and the noisiest in
its charm.

Give us more, 0 nightingale,” said the great prince. “ Son of
Procris ! I wish we wore in the old times of tyranny that I could
impi’ison you close to me all your life in a golden cage.”

“ Tn a cag(^ 1 should sing not a note, monscignoiir. They are
but bastard night ingnles iliat sing imprisoned,” said Correze.

All the wJjilc lu5 did not look at Vere directly once, yet he saw
nothing except that fair, cold, grave face, and the cold lustre of the
diamonds that were like light all over her.

“ Sing once more or recite,” said the prince caressingly. ** Sing
once more and I will reward you; 1 will bring you into the light
of tbc midnight sun, and after that you will never hoar the glare
of the common day.”

“ Is that reward, monscigneur? To be made to regret all oiic’y
life ? ” said Correze.

And where he still leaned against the rail, with the moonlit and
lamplit gardens behind him, he struck a chord or two lingeringly
on his lute as Stradella might have struck them under the shadow
of St. Mark, and recited the “ Huit dc Mai ” of Allred de Musset :

Pobte, prends ton luth . ; . .

Le printenips nait ce soir . .

The “ Nuit d’Oetohre ” is more famous because it has been mor^
often recited by great actors; but tho “ Nuit de Mai” is perhaps
still finer, and is more true to the temper and the destiny of poets.

All the sweet intoxication of the spring-tido at evening, Avhen
le vin de la jeunesse fermente cetie nuit dans les veincs de Dku ”
is hut the prelude to tho terrible struggle that has its symbol in
the bleeding bird dying before the empty ocean and tho desert
shore, having rent its breast and spent its blood in vain.

The superb peroration, which closes one of tho noblest f-pd

m

MOTES.

most sustained flights o{ imagery that any poet of any nation has
ever produced, rolled through the silence of tlto room in the mag-
nificent melody of ^oice, tuned alike by nature and by art to the
highest expression of human feeling and of human eloquence.

Then his voice dropped low and stole, like a sigh of exhaustion,
through the hush around him, in the answer of the poet; the
answer that the heart of every artist gives soon or late to Fate.

O muse, spectre insatiable,

Kc m’en domandc pas si long,

J/homme n’e'erit rien sur Ic sable
A I’heure ou passe I’aqiiilon.
d’ai vu Ic temps oil rna jeunessc
Sur VOS Icvres etait sans ccsse,

I’rcte a chanter comme im oiseaii ;

. Mais j’ai souffert un dur martyre.

Et le moins que j’en pourrais dire,

Si je Tessayais sur ma lyre,

La briscrait comme un roseau.

When the words sank into silence, the silence remained unbroken.
I'lie careless, the frivolous, the happy, the cynical, were all alike
smitten into a sudden pain, a vague regret, and, for that passing
moment, felt the pang the poet feels, always, till death comes to
him.

Two great tears- rolled down the cheeks of the loveliest woman
there, and fell on the great diamonds. When the prince, who had
shaded his ejms with his hand, looked up, the lute-player bowed
low to him and glided through the crowd.

“ And 1 was just about to present him to the Princess Zouroff,”
said the royal personage, slightly annoyed and astonished. “ Well,
one must pardon his caprices, for we have no other like 1dm ; and
])crhaps his judgment is true. One who can move us like that
should not, immediately on our emotion, speak to us as a mere
mortal in compliment or commonplace. The artist, like the god,
should dwell unseen sometimes. But I envy him if I forgive
him.”

Foi lie looked at the dimmed eyes of Vere.

CHAPTER XVI.

On the day following Correze left Paris to fulfil his London engage-
ments ; it was the beginning of May.

When his name disappeared from the announcements, and his
person from the scenes of the Grand Op6ra, then, and then alone,
vere began to realise all that those nights at the lyric theatre had
bpen in her life.

MOTUk 187

When sliC ceased to hear that one ].Wfcct voice, the whole world
seemed mute. THoso few hours in eaci^ week had gone so far t^
solace her for the weariness, the haste,\,the barren magnificemj^'
and the tiresome adulation of her world; had done so mu^-^o
give her some glimpse of the ideal life, s6me echo of lost^dieams,
some strength to bear disillusion and disgust.

, The utter absence of vanity in her made h(yii«?4ncapablo of
dreaming that Correzo avoided her becausoJb 0 i-^*^cmbered only
too well. She fully thought.he hadJgtrffjtfSfiSn her. What was a
morning by the sea with a chtldTjJllShn^over life of a man
foremost in art and in pleasure^jeeils^rated at once to the Muses
and the world JSheJWHrqTiTto sure he had forgotten hen Even
as he had recited the “ Nuit de Mai ” his eyes had had no recog-
nition in them. So she thought.

This error made her memory of him tender, innocent, and wist-
ful as a memory of the dead, and softened away all alarm for her
from the emotion that possessed her.

He was nothing to her — nothing — except a memory ; and she
was not even that to him.

Paris became very op])rcssivc to her.

I'hat summer Prince Zouroff, by Imperial command, returned tc
his estate in Russia, to complete the twelve months’ residence
which had been commanded him.

They were surrounded by a large house-party wherever tlicy
resided, and were never alone. Vero fultilled the social duties of
her high station with grace and courtesy, but ho found her too cold
and too negligent in society, and reproachtd her continually for
some inditferenco to punctilio, some oblivion of precedence.

Neither her mind nor her heart was with these things. All of
them seemed to her so trivial and so useless ; she had been born
with her mind and her heart both framed for greater force and
richer interest than the pomp of etuiuette and ceremonial, the
victories of precedence and prestige.

They had made her a great lady, a woman of the world, a court
beauty, but they could not destroy in her the temper of the studious
and tender-hearted child who had read Greek with her dogs about
her under the old trees of Buhner Chase. She had ceased to study
because she was too weary, and she strove to steel and chill her
heart because its tenderness could bring her no good ; yet she could
not change her nature. The world was always so little to her ;
her God and the truth were so much, Bhe had been reared in the
old fashion and she remained of it.

In the gorgeous routine of her life in Russia she always heard
in memory the echo of the “ Nuit de Mai.”

A great lassitude and hopelessness came over her, which there
was no one to rouse and no one to dispel. Marriage could never
bring her aught better than it- brought her already — o. luxurious
and ornamented slavery; and maternity could bring her

188

MOTHS.

solation, for sue knew very well that her children would bo dealt
with as tyrannically as was her life. '

They remained that winter in Russia. The Duke and Duchesso
do Sonnaz came there for a little time, and the Duchesse Jeanne
wore out her silver skates at the midnight fetes upon the ice, a
miracle of daring and agility, in her favourite crimson colours, with
her sparkling and ugly face beaming under a hood of fur.

** Why does one never tire of you f ” ZourolF muttered, as he
waltzed with her over the Neva in one of the most gorgeous fetes
Df th(3 winter season.

IMadaine Jeanne laughed.

" Because 1 am ugly, perhaps, or because, as you said once,
because, fai le talent de m^cncanailler. But then, so many have
that.” /

He said nothing, but as he felt her wheel and dart with the
swiltness of a swallow, clastic and untiring as though her hips
were swung on springs of steel, he thought to hiinself that it
was because she never tired herself. “7i7/e se ffrisc ni hien,^* he
said of her when he had resigned her to an ofiicer of the guard,
that night. To sc griscr with drink, or with play, or with folly, or
wnth politics, is the talent of the moment that is most po 2 )iilar. To
bo temperate is to be stupid.

Ilis wife, in her. ermine folds, which clothed her as in snow
from licad to foot, and without any point of colour on her any-
where, with her grave proud eyes that looked like arctic stars, and
her slow, silent, undulating movement, might have the admiration
of the court and city, but bad no charm for him. She was his
own ; ho had ])aid a price for her that he at times begrudged, and
she had humiliated him. In a sense she was a perpetual humilia-
tion to him, for he was a man of intellect enough to know her
moral worth, and to know that ho had never been worthy to pass
the threshold of her chamber, to touch the hem of her garment.
At the bottom of his heart there was always a sullen reverence for
her, an unwilling veneration for her sinlessness and her honour,
which only alienated him farther from lier with each day.

Why would you marry a young saint ? ” said his friend, the
Duchesse Jeanne, always to him in derisive condolence.

Did he wish her a sinner instead? There were times when he
almost felt that he did ; ^vhen he almost felt that even at the price
of his own loss ho would like to see h6r head drop and her eyes
droop under some consciousness of evil ; would like to bo able once
to cait at her some bitter name of shame.

There were times when he almost hated her, hated her for the
transparent purity of her regard, for the noble scorn of her nature,
for the silence and the patience with which she endured his many
outrages. “ After all,” he thought to hinisclf, “ what right has slic
to bo so far above us all ? She gave herself to mo for my rank, as
llnv^)thcrs gave themselves for my gold.” •

MOTUS.

189

That cold glittering winter passed like a pageant, and in the
midst of it there c^me a sorrow to her that had in it something of
remorse. The old Dowager Duchess at Buhner died after a day's
illness ; died in solitude, except for the faithful servants about her,
and was buried under the weird bent oalcs by tlio moors, by the
northern sea. Vero lamented bitterly. “And she died without
knowing the truth of meT' she thought with bitter pain; and
there was no message of pardon, no sign of remembrance from tlTo
dead to console her. “Wc are an unforgiving race,” thought Vorc,
wearily. “ I, too, cannot forgive. I can endure, but 1 cannot
l)ardon."

This loss, and the state of her own health, gave her reason and
excuse for leaving the world a little while. 8he remained absent
while her husband waltzed with the Duchessc Jeanne at Imperial
balls and winter totes, and gave siij^pcrs in the cafes, of which the
rooms were bowers of palms and roses, and the drinkers drank deej)
till the red simriso.

She remained in solitude in the vast, luxurious, carefully heated
palace of the Zourotf princes, where never a breath of cold air
penetrated. Her health suffered from that imprisonment in a hot-
liouso, which was as unnatural to her as it would l)avo been to or
of the young oak trees of Bulmcr Chase, or to one of its moor-b < u
forest docs.

Another child was born to her, and horn dead ; a frail, ].iale
little corpse, that never saw the light of the world. She was long
ill, and even tlie tediousiicss and exhaustion of lengtliened weak-
ness were welcome to her, since they released her from court, from
society, and from her husband.

AVhen she was at length strong enough to breathe the outer
air, tlic ice was broken up on the Heva, and even in Hussia trees
were budding, and grass pushing up its slender spears through the
cartli.

The Duclicsse de Sonnaz had long before returned to Paris, and
Prince Zouroll* had gone there for busiucss. By telegram he ordered
his wife to join him as soon as she was able, and she also travelled
there with Madame Nelaguine when all the lilac was coming into
blossom in the Tuileries and the Luxembourg gardens, and behind
the Hotel Zourolf in the Avenue du Bois do Boulogne.

A year had gone by ; she had never seen the face of Correze.

She had learned in midwinter by the public voice that he had
refused all engagements in Bussia, giving as the i^lea the injury to
his throat from the climate in past seasons. She had seen by the
public press that he had been singing in ^ladrid and Vienna, had
been to Pome for bis pleasure, and for months had been, as of old,
the idol of Paris.

As she entered the city it was of him once more that she
thought.

A flush of reviving life came into the paleness of her chock, c*.5d

190

MOTH&L

a throb of eager expectation to her pulses, as she thought that once
more in the opera-house she would hear that pel feet melody of the
tones which liad chanted the “ Nuit de Mai.” It was May now, she
remembered, and it was also night with her, one long dark hope-
less night.

Voild la helle Princesse J ” said a work-girl with a sigh of envy,
as she chanced to stand by the great gilded pites of the Hotel
Zouroff, as Vere went Ihiough tliem in her carriage, lying back on
the cushions of it with what was the lassitude of physical and
mental hxtigue, but to the work-girl looked like the haughty indo-
lence and languor of a great lady. She was more beautiful than
she had ever been, but she looked much older than she was ; her
youth was frozen in her, the ice seemed in her veins, in her brain,
in her heart.

Prince Zourolf met her at the foot of the staircase. Ho had
been in Paris two months.

“I hoiie you arc not too tired? ” he said politely, and gave her
his arm to ascend the stairs. “ You look tcnibly white,” he added,
when they were alone, and had reached the drawing-room. “ You
will really have to rouge, believe me.”

Then, as if remembering a duty, he kissed her carelessly.

** I hope you will feel well enough to go to Orlotfs to-night,” he
^dded ; “ 1 have promised that you will, and Worth tells me that he
lias sent you some new miracle expressly for it. The party is made
for the Grand Duke, you know.”

“ I dare say I shall be well enough,” Vere answered him simply.
“ If you will excuse me, I will go to my room and lie down a little
while.”

She went to her hodchamher where the “Slave” of Goromo
hung on the wall.

“All these came this morning and yesterday for madamo,” said
her maid, showing her a table full of letters, and notes, and invita-
tion cards, and one large bouquet of roses amidst them.

Hoses had been around her all winter in Petersburg, but those
were very lovely unforced flowers ; all tlic varieties of the tea-rose
in their shades and sizes, with their delicate faint smell that is like
the scent of old perfumed laces, but in the centre of all these roses
of fashion and culture there was a ring of the fragrant homely dewy
cahhage-rose, and in the very centre of tliesc, again, a little spray of
sweetbriar.

Vere bent her face over their sweetness.

“ Who sent these ? ” she asked ; and before she asked she knew.

No one in the house did know. The bouquet had been left
that morning for her. There was no name with it except lier own
name.

But the little branch of sweetbriar said to her that it was the
welcome of Correze, who had not forgotten,
w' It touched and soothed her. It seemed very sweet and thought-

MOTJIJS,

191

ful beside the wc1ct|iic of her liusband, wlio bade her rouge and go
to an embassy ball.

I always thought ho had forgotten ! ” she mused, and, tired
though she was, with her own liands she set the roses in a great
cream-coloured bowl of Pesaro pottery of Casali di Lodi’s, and had
them close beside her couch as she fell asleep.

She who had so much pride had no vanity. It seemed strange
to her that in his brilliant and busy life, full of its triumphs and its
changes, he should remember one summer morning by the sea with
a child.

That night she went to the splendour of Prince Orloff’s fete ;
she did not rouge, but Paris found her lovelier than she had ever
been ; beneath the diamonds on her breast she had put a little bit
of sweetbriar that no one saw. It seemed to her like a little talis-
man come out to her from her old lost life, when she and the world
had been strangers.

It was a great party in the lliio do Grcnelle. Correze was there
as a guest ; he did not approach her.

The next night she was in her box in the opera-house. Correze
sang in the Prophete. She met the gaze of his eyes across the
house, and son\cthing in their regard throbbed through her with a
thrill like pain, and haunted her. He had never been in grander
force or more wondrous melody than he wa« that night. Ihe
Duchesse do Sonnaz, who accompanied Ven^, broke her iaii in the
vehcmeiico and enthusiasm of her applause.

“ They say that there are two tenor voices, la voix de clalron et
la voix de darlnette,^ she said. “ The voice of Correze is the voix
du clairon of an archangel.”

Vere sighed, quuhly and wearily.

Jeanne de f^onnaz looked at her with a sudden and close
scrutiny.

Was there not some story of her and Correze ? ” she thought.

The next evening Correze was free.

He dined at Bignon’s with some friends before going to the
receptions of the great world. As they left the cafe about ten
o’clock they saw Prince Zouroff enter with a companion and pass on
to one of the piivate rooms ; he was laughing loudly.

“ Who is with him to-night ? ” said one of the men who had
dined with Correze. Another of them answered —

** Did you not see her black eyes and her mouth like a poppy ?
It is Cassc-une-Crodte.”

Correze said nothing ; he hade his friends good-night ami
walked down the Avenue de POpera by himself, though rain was
falling and strong winds blew.

If he had followed his impulse he would liave gone hack into
Bignon’s, forced open the door of the cabinet particulier, and struck
Sergius Zouroff. But he had no right I

He returned to his own rooms, dressed, and went to two

192

MOTHS.

thr^ great parties. The last house he wont -to was the hotel in
the Faubourg St. Germain of the Due and Ducncsso de Sonnaz.

It was a great soiree for foreign royalties; Vero was present;
the last injunction of her husband had been, as he had risen from
the* dinner- table: “Go to Jeanne’s by one o’clock to-night or she
will be annoyed ; you will say 1 am engaged ; there is a club-
meeting at the Ganaches.”

Vere never disobeyed his commands.'

“ I cannot love or honour jmu,” she had said to him once, “ but
I can obey you,” and she did so at all times.

The night was brilliant.

It recalled the best days of the perished Empire.

The Princess Zouroff came late ; Correze saw her arrive, and tlie
crowds part, to let her pass, as they part for sovereigns ; she wore
black velvet only, she was still in mourning ; her white beauty
looked as though it were made of snow.

“ And he goes to a mulattress ! ” thought Correze.

Later in the evening she chanced to be seated where there stood
a grand piano in one of the drawing-rooms. He saw her from afar
olf ; the Duchesse Jeanne passing him hurriedly was saying to him
at the time : “ If only you had not that cruel selfish rule never to
sing a note for your friends, what a charm of the hel imprevu you
might give to my poor little ball ! ”

Correze bowed before her. “ Madame, my rules, like all laws of
the universe, must yield to you 1 ”

He crossed the drawing-room to the piano.

Correze had never consented to sing professionally in private
houses.

“ The theatre is a different affair, but I do not choose my friends
to pay me money,” he universally answered, and out of his theatre
he was never heard, unless he sang for charity, or as an act of mere
friendship. Even as a social kindness it was so rare that any one
could induce him to bo heard at all, that when this night he
approached the piano and struck a minor chord or two, the princely
crowds hurried together to be near like the commonest mob in the
world. Voro, only, did not move from where she sat on a low
chair beneath some palms, and the four or five gentlemen about her
remained still bocaiiso she did so.

She was some little distance from the instrument, but she saw
him as he moved towards it more nearly than she had done since
the recital of the “ Nuit de Man”

She saw the beautiful and animated face that had fascinated
her young eyes in the early morning light on the rocks of the
Calvados shore. He had not changed in any way ; something of
the radiance and gaiety of its expression was gone — that was all.

He sat down and ran his hands softly over the keys in Schu-
mann’s “ Adieu.” She could no longer see him for the plumes of

palms and blossoms of the azaleas, that made a grove of foliage

MOTHS.

193

and flowers which, concealed the piano, and there was a courlly
crowd of gay people and grand people gathered around him ia
pilence, waiting for the first sound of that voice which, because it
was so rarely heard, was so eagerly desired. Hour after hour in his
own rooms he would sing to the old man Auber, whom ho loved, or
in the rough studios in the village of Barbizan he would give his
music all night long to artists whose art ho cared for, but by the
world of fashion ho was never heard out of the opera-house.

He struck a few pathetic chords in B minor, and sang to a
melody of his own a song of Heine — -

In mein gar zu dunkles Lcben —

the song of the singer who is “like a child lost in the dark.”

Had she understood that he had a tale to tell ? Had tlie song
of Heine, that bewailed a vanished vision, carried his secret to
her ? Ue could not know.

She sat (piitc still and did not lift her eyes. The crowd moved
and screened her from liis view.

“Will she understand?” he thought, as the apidause of the
people around him followed on the breathless stillness of delight
wiili wliicli they had listened, lie heard nothing that they said to
him. Ho was looking at her in the distance, wiiere she sat with
the great white fan dropped upon her knee and her eyelids drooped
over her eyes, lie was tl\iiiking as he looked — *

“And that brute goes with a quadroon to a restaurant ! And
uhon slio had a dead child born to her, he went all the while with
Jeanne do Sonnaz to masked balls and court fetes on the ice! ”

Over his mobile face as he mused a dark shadow went; the
t-hadow of passionate disgust and of futile wrath.

His hands strayed a little over the keys, toying with memories
of CJiOpiii, and Beethoven, and Palestrina. Tlien to tlic air of a
Salularis Hostia that he had composed and sung for a great mass
in Noire Dame years before, he sang clear and low as a mavis’s call
at daybreak to its love the Frier e of a French poet.

She could not see him for the throngs of grand people and giddy
pco])le who surged about him in their decorations and their jewels,
but the first notes of his voice came to her clear as a bird’s call at
daybreak to its love.

lie sang to a melody in the minor of his own the simple
pathetic versos of a young poet —

PtillSRE.

An ! si vons savicz coniine on plcuro
Do vivre seal et sans fo3"crs,

Quclquefois devant ina dememe
Vous passcriez.

Si vous savicz ce qiie fait nailra
Dana rainc tristc un pur regard,

Vous rcgardcriez ma fenutre.

Com me au liasard.

0

194

MOTHS.

Si voufl saviez quel baumc apporte
Au coeur la prc'sencc d’un coeur,

Vous vous assoiricz sous ma portc,

Comme une sceur.

Si vous savicz que jo vous aime,

Surtout si vous saviez comment,

Vous cntroricz pcut-6irc rac*mc
Tout simplcmcnt.

His voice sank to silence as softly as a rosclcaf falls to earth.

Then there arose, like the buzz of a thousand insects, the
adoring applause of a polished society.

Si vous saviez que jc vous aime,

Surtout si vous savicz comment,

Vous entreriez pcut-ctre memc
Tout simplcmcnt !

The words had filled the room with their sweet iucffahle
melody, and had reached Vcrc and brought their conlcssion to her.

Her heart leaped like a hound thing set frc?c; then a burning
warmth that seemed to her like lire itself seemed to flood her veins.
In some way the great crowd had parted and she saw the face of
Coit4zo for a moment, and his eyes met hers.

He had told his talc in the lanyuago he knew best and loved
tbe most.

TJie next he was lost in the midst of his worshippers, who
vainly im])lorc<l him t<> return and sing again.

Vere, tutored by the world she lived in, sat quite still, and let
her broad fan oC white feathers lie motionless in her hands.

“Am I vile to have told her? Surely she must know it so
well ! said CoiTczc to himself as ho sent* his horses away and
walked through the streets of Paris in the chill mists that heralded
daylight. “Am I vile to have told her? Will she ever look at me
again? Will she hate me for ever ? Will she understand ? Per-
haps not. I sing a thousand songs; why should one have more
moaning than aiiuthcr? She sees me play a hundred jiassiuiis on
the stage. Why should she believe 1 can feel one? And yet— and
yet I think she will know, and ])erhaps she will not forgive ; I lear
she will never forgive.”

lie reproached himself bitterly as he walked home after mid-
night through the throngs of the P>oiilevards. He said to himself
that if he had not seen Sergius Zourolf entering Pigiuai’s he would
never so far have broken his resolution and failed in his honoui*.
He reached his home, disturbed by apprehension and haunted with
Tcmorsc. For an einjure he would not have breathed a profane
word in the ear of the woman who ful tilled his ideal of women, and
he was afraid that he had insulted her.

He did not goto his bod at all ; he walked up and down his long
suite of rooms in tlic intense scent of the hothouse bouquets which
as^-msual covered every table and console in the chambers.

MOTHS. 196

For a loss declaration than that, he had seen great ladies glide
veiled through hiS^yloors ; nay, they had come unask'cd.

But lie knew very well that she would never come one step on
the way to meet him, even if she understood.

And that she would even understand he doubted.

The morning rose and the sun broke the mists, but its rays
could not pierce through the olive velvet of his closed curtains, lie
walked to and fro, restlessly, through the artificial light and fra-
grance of his rooms. If she had been like the others, if he had heard
lier step on the stair, if he had seen tliat proud head veiled in the
mask of a shameful secrecy, what would he have felt? — he thought
lie would have felt tlio instant rapture, the endless despair, tJiat
men filt in the old days who sold their souls to hell ; the rapture
that lived an hour, the despair that endured an eternity.

When he threw back his shutters and saw the brightness of
morning, he rang and ordered his liorsc and rode out into the Bois
without breaking his fast; the rides were all moist with the night’s
rain ; the boughs were all green with young leaf ; birds were sing-
ing as though it w^cre the heart of the provinces. He rode fast and
recklessly ; the air was clear and fresh with a west wdnd stirring in
it ; it refreshed him more than sleep.

As he ndurned two hours later he saw her \valking in one of the
alUes dcs 'pietons ; she w\as in black, with some old wdiitc laces about
her throat ; before her were her dogs and behind her w as a Uussiaii
servant. lie checked his horse in the ride adjacent, and waited for
her to pass by him.

She did pass, bowed without looking at him, and went onw^ard
bctwxum the stems of the leafless trees.

Then he thought to himself that she had understood, but he
doubted that she ever would forgive.

When she was quite out of sight ho dismounted, gatliercd a late
violet in the grass where she had passed him, and rode liome.

She understood a little,” he thought, “ enough to alarm,
enough to oifend her. She is too far above us all to understand
more. Even life spent by tlio side of that brute has not tainted
her. They arc right to call her the Jee-flower. She dwells apart in
higlier air than we ever breathe.”

And his heart sank, and his life seemed very empty. He lovctl
a woman who was nothing to him, wlio could be iiotliiiig to him,
and who, even if ever she loved liim, he W'ould no more drag down
to the low level of base frailties than he would si)it upon the cross
his fathers w’orshipped.

T'he next night was tlie last of his engagement at the Grand
Opera. It \vas a niglit of such homage and triumj)!! as even he had
hardly ever known. But to him it was blank ; the box that was
ITince ZourolTs was empty.

He left Baris at daybreak,

Vcrc did indeed, but imperfectly, understand. As the song had

196

MOTHS.

reached her ear a snddon flornl of joy came to her with it; it had
been to her as if the heavcus had ojiciicd; she had for one moment
realised all that her life might have been, and she saw that he would
have loved her.

When she reached the solitude of her chamber at home, she re-
proached herself ; she seemed to herself to have sinned, and it seeiued
to her a supreme vanity to have dreamed of a personal message in
the evening song of an eloquent singer. Did ho not sing every night
of love — every night that the public applauded the sorcery of his
matchless music ?

That ho might have loved her, she did believe. Tiiero was a
look in his regard that told her so, whenever his eyes met hers
across the opera-house, or in tlie crowds of the streets, or of society.
But of more she did not, Avould not, tliink.

Perhaps some memory of that one summer morning hannt(?d
him as it haunted her, with the sad vision of a sweetness that might
have been in life, and never would be now ; perhaps a vague regret
was really with him. So much she thought, but nothing more.

The world she lived in had taught her nothing of its vanities, of
its laxities, of its intrigiics. She kept tlic heart of her girlhood.

was still of the old lashion, and a faithless wife was to her a
wanton. iMnrriago might be loveless, and joyless, and soulless, and
outrage all that it brought ; but its bond had been taken, and its
obligations accepted*; no sin of others could set her free.

Her husband could not have understood that, nor could her
mother, nor could her world ; but to Vere it was clear as the day,
that, not to be utterly w’orthlcss in her own sight, not to be base as
the sold creatures of the sti-eets, she must give fidelity to the faith-
less, cleanliness to the unclean.

Even that caress she had given to the roses seemed to her
treacherous and wrong.

CILiPTEIl XVIL

PaixCE ZounoFP stayed in Paris until tlie end of June. There was
no place that he liked so well. Lady Doily passed a few weeks at
Mcurice’s, and told her daughter with a little malice and a little
pleasure, that the son to whom tlie Duchess of Mull had recently
given birth, to the joy of all the Northumbrian border, had heel:
baptised with the name ofYcrc, with much jiump at Castle Herbert.

‘'My name and my father’s!” said A''cre wdth coldest indigna-
tion. “And her father sold drink and opium to miners ! ”

“ And the brothers kill pigs — by macliiucry,” said her mother.
“ C^'^taiuly it is very funny. If Columbus had never discovered

MOTHS.

107

Arnerica would all^theso queer things have happened to us ? There
is no doubt we do g^t ‘ mixed,* as the lovely Fuschia would say.**

Pick-inc-up, as Duchess of Mull, had become even a greater
success, were that possible, than Fuschia Leach had been. No fancy
frisk, no little dinner, no big ball was anything without that brih
liautly tinted face of hers, with the little impertinent nose, and the
big radiant audacious eyes that had the glance of the street-arab,
and the surprise of the fawn. Francis of Mull, tender, stupid, and
shy, lived in a perpetual intoxication at the wonder of his own pos-
session of so much beauty, so much mirth, and so much audacity,
and no more dreamed of op])osing her wishes than, excellent young
man that he was, he had ever dreamed of opposing his tutors and
guardians. He was under a charm in a blind, dazed, benighted way
that diverted her, and yet made her heartily sick of him ; and she
took the reins of government into her own hands and kept 'them.
Not a tree was felled, not a horse was bought, not a farm lease was
signed, but what the young duchess knew the reason wliy.

I’ll stop all this beastly waste, and yet 1*11 do it much liner,
and get. a lot more for my money,** she said to herself when she lirst
went to the biggest house of all their houses, and she did do so with
that admirable combination of thrift and display of which the
American mind alone has the scc.et.

The expenses of his household in six months had been diminished
by seven thousand pounds, yet the Duke of Mull had entertained
royalty for three days at Castle Herbert with a splendour that his
county had never seen. She was not at all mean, except in chari-
ties, but she got her nioney*s worth.

“My diar old donkey, your wife didn't go pricing sprats all
down Broadway without knowing what to give for a red herring,’*
said Her Grace, in the familiar yet figurative language in which tlie
great nation slic had belonged to deliglits.

“ Cooking accounts won’t go down with her,** said the bailiffs,
and the butlers, the housekeepers, the stud-grooms, and the lu ad
gardeners, to one another with a melancholy unanimity at all her
houses.

“Do you know, Vcrc, she is a great success,** said Lady Dolly
one day. “ Very, very great. There is nobody in all Englaiid one
quarter so popular.** .

“ I quite believe it,** said Vere.

“'J’hen why won’t you be friends with her?”

“ Why should I be ? **

“ Well, she is your cousin.^*

“ She is a woman my cousin has married. There is no possible
relation between her and me.”

“ But do you not think it is always as well to — to — be plea-
sant?”

“ No, I do not. If no one else remember the oaks of the forests
I do not forget them/*

198

MOTES.

“ Oh, the oaks,” said Lady Dolly. “ Yes, thej^are mining there ,*
hut they were nasty, damp, windy places, I don’t &'ee that it matters.”

“ What a terribly proud woman you are, Vera,” added the Prin-
cess Nadine, who was every whit as proud herself, “ and yet you
think' so litlle of rank.”

J think nothing of rank,” said Vcrc, “ but I do think very
much of race ; and I cannot understand how men, who are so careful
of the descent of their horses and hounds, are so indifferent to the
contamination of their own blood.”

“ If you liad lived before ’DO you would have gone very grandly
to tlie guillotine,” said her si&'ier-in-law.

“ I should have gone in good company,” said Vere ; “ it is difficult
to live in it nowadays.”

“ With what an air you say that,” said Madame Nelaguinc ;
“ really sometimes one would think you were a marquise of a hun-
dred years old, and in your childhood had seen your chateau burnt
by the mob.”

“ All my chateaux were burnt long ago,” said Vere, with a sigh
that she stilled.

Madame Nelagnine understood.

Vere was glad when the warmth grew greater with the days of
early summer, and her husband, entering her morning-room, said
abruptly —

The Grand Prix is run to-inorrow. You seem to have forgotten
it. On Saturday we will go down to Folicito. You will invite
IMdine. do Sonnaz and Mdmo. do Mirilhac, and any one else that
you ))lca8e. Nadine will come, no doubt.”

A Zouroff horse won the Grand Prix, and Prince Zouroff was for
once in a coiit(aited mood, which lasted all the next day. As the
train ran through the level green country towards Calvados he said
with good-humoured gallaiitry to his wife —

“ You liave not invited me, Vera. The place is yours. I have
no business in it unless you wish for me.”

** The place is always yours, and I am yours,” she answered in
a low tone.

From a woman who had loved him the words would have heoii
tender; from her, they were but an acknowledgment of being pur-
chased. His humour changed as he heard thorn; his face grew
dark ; he: devoted himself to Mdme. Jeanne, wdio w^as travelling with
them ; she had refused to stay at Feiicite, however, and had taken
for herself the little Chalet Ludoff at Trouville,

" You are a bear ; but she makes you dance, Sergius,” whispered
the duchess with malice.

Zouroff frowned.

“ Bears do something beside dancing,” he muttered.

“ Yes ; tliey eat honey,” re})lied Mdme. de Sonnaz. “ You have
hud more honey than was good for you all your days. Now you
ha;e got something that is not honey.”

MOTHS.

190

Vere, with her delicate straight profile against the light, sat
looking at the greifil fields and the blue sky, and did not hear what
was said.

“ If she cared, or rather if she understood,” thought the Ducliess
Jeanne, as she glanced at her, “she would rule him instead of being
ruled ; she could do it ; but she would have to keep the bear on hot
vlates — as I did.

Zouroff, screened behind “ Figaro,” looked from one woman to
the other.

“ How grande dame she is,” he thought. ‘‘ Beside her Jeanne
looks hizarrcy ugly, almost vulgar. And yet Vera bores me when
she does not enrage me, and enrages me when she does not boro
me ; while with the other, one is always on good terms with one’s
self.”

“ I know what you wore thinking, my friend,” whispemd the
duchess under cover of tlie noise and twilight of the IMartainvillo
tunnel. “But all the difiorcncc, 1 assure you, is that she is your
wife and I am Paurs. If she were not your wife you would be
furiously in love with her, and were I your wife you would find me
a chaite enragee with frightful green eyes.”

Zourolf laughed gi’imly. He did not tell her that his thoughts
had been less complimentary than those she had attributed to him.

“I could find it in me to toll you your eyes were green when
you spite mo by not corning to Felicite,” he nmrmured instead.

Mdrno. Jeanne twisted the “Figaro” about, and said : “Chut!
Wo shall meet more freely at the little Ludotf house.”

Vere only heard the rustling of the “ Figaro ” sheet. She was
looking at the clock-tower of jSt. Tourin, and the summer glory of
the forest of Evreux.

Madame Jeanne stayed at Trouvillc. Vere, with her husband,
drove in the punier, with four white i)onics, that awaited tliem at
the station, along the shady avenue that leads out of the valley of
the Toucques towards Villiers. The sunshine was brilliant, the air
sweet, the sea, when the rise of the road brought it into view, wa.s
blue as tlic sky, and the fishing fleets were on it. Vere closed her
eyes as the bright marine picture came in sight, and felt the tears
rise into them.

Only three years before she had been Vere Herbert, coming on
the dusty sands below, with no more knowledge or idea of the
world’s pomps, and vanities, and sins, and vices, than any one of
the bright-eyed deer that were now living out their happy lives
under the oak shadows of Bulmer Chase. Only three years before !

Zouroff, lying back in the little carriage, looked at her through
his half-shut eyelids.

“ Ma chhre /” he said with his little rough laugh, “ we ought to
feel very sweet emotions, you and I, returning here. Tell me arc
you a la hauteur de Voccasion ? I fear I am not. Perhaps, after a
glass of sherry, the proper emotion may visit me.”

200

MOTHS.

Vere made no reply. Her eyes, wide-opened now, were looking
straight forward; she drove her ponies steadily. t ^

“ What do you feel ? ” ho persisted. “ It is an interesting return.
Pray tell me.”

“ I have ceased to analyse what I feel,” she answered, in her
clear cold voice. “ I prefer to stifle it.”

“ You are very courteous ! ”

“I think you have very often said yourself that courtesy is not
one of the obligations of marriage. You ask mo for the truth, I tell
you the truth.”

“ In three years of the world have you not learned a pretty lie
yet!”

“No. I shall not learn it in twenty years.”

“ Do you know that there arc times when you answer me so
that I 6ould heat you like a dog ? ”

“ I dare say.”

“ Is that all you say ? ”

“ What should 1 say ? If you heat me, it would not hurt me
much more than other things.”

Zourotr was silent. He saw that she drove her ponies on tran-
quilly, and that her hlush-rose cheek neither flushed nor paled.
Master of her body and mind, present and future, though he was,
ho had a sullen sense of her escaping him always, and he had as
sullen a respect for hlT courage and her calmness.

“She would bo a mother of young lions!” ho thought, as
Lamartine thought of Deliiiine Gay, and he felt bitter against her
that his sons had died.

They reached Felicite as the sun set over the seaj where the low
shores by Caen were liidden in a golden mist. The dressiiig-hcil
was ringing in the Gothic cluck-tower; the tribe ot eanary-hued
lacqueys were bending to the ground in the beautirul cedar-wood
hall, with its pointed arches, and its illuminated shields, which had
captivated the young eyes of Vere Herbert.

Madame Nelaguine had arrived before them, and her welcome,
wit, and careful tact saved them from the terrors and the tedium
of a tete-a-tete.

“ Are you glad to come here, Ycra ? ” she asked. .

“ I am glad to see the sea,” answered Vere. “ But I am tired
of moving from house to house. We have no home. We have
only a number of hotels.”

“ I think you will be happier than in Paris,” said the Princess
Nadine. “ You will have the trouble of a house-party, it is true;
but your mornings you can spend in your garden, your hothouses,
with your horses, or on the sea ; you will be freer.”

“Yes,” assented Vera. She did not hear; sbe was looking
through the great telescoj^e on the terrace down along the line o1*
the shore ; she was trying to discern amongst the broken confused
indei^j^tions of the rocky beach the place where Corr^ze had sung

MOTHS.

201

to her and to thc|larkv But the sea and land were blent in one
golden glow as the sun went down behind the black cliffs of western
Calvados, and she could discern nothing that she knew.

The dressing-bell was ringing, and she hurried to her rooms.
Her husband was intolerant of any excuses of fatigue or indisposition,
and always expected to see her in full toilette whether there was no
one, or whether there were fifly persons, at his table. Sometimes
it seemed to her as if all her life were consumed in the mere acts
of dressing and undressing ; the paradise of other women was her
purgatory.

They dined alone, only enlivened by the ironies of the Princess
Nadine, who when she chose could be exceedingly amusing, if very
acid in her satires; when dinner was over they went out on to tlie
terrace where tlie moonliglit was brilliant. Some geiitlemon from
the CliA-teau Villiors had ridden over to congratulate Prince Zouroff
on the achievement of his racer. They were old friends of his,
heroes and disciples of “ le sport." After a while they talked only
of that idol. Verc sat looking at the moonlit Gliannel. Madame
Nelaguinc, within the room, was ])iaying quaint mournful melodics
of old Gcu’inan composers, and sad Russian folk-airs. Felicite was
very peaceful, very lovely ; on the morrow the glittering noisy
feverish life of the great world would begin under its roof, with its
house-])arty of Parisians and Russians. .

“ What a pity, what a pity ! One has not time to breathe,"
thought Vere, as she leaned her head against the marble balustrade,
and rested her eyes on the sea.

WJiat a i)ity ! ” she thought, the loveliest things in all crea-
tion are the sunrise and the moonlight ; and who has time in our
stnj'id life, that is called ]dcasure, to sec cither of them?”

A full moon made the narrow sea a sheet of silver ; a high tide
had carried the beach up to the edge of the black rooks ; in the
white luminous space one little dark sail was slowly drifting before
the wind, the sail of a fishing or dredging boat. ^Jdie calmness, the
silence, the lustre, the sweet, fresh, strong sea'seent, so familiar to
her in her cliihlhood, filled her with an infinite mclancliuly.

Only three years, and how changed she was ! All her youth
had been burnt up in her; all hope was as dead in her heart as if
she were alrendy old.

She sat and thought, as the dreamy music from within united
with the murmur of the sea ; she had said truly that she now
strove to stifle thought, hut her nature was meditative, and she
could never wholly succeed.

‘‘ Perhaps I am not right, perhaps I do not do all that I might,”
she mused ; and her conscience reproached her with harshness and
hatred against the man whom she had sworn to honour.

“ Honour ! ” she thought bitterly ; what a world of mockery lay
in that one little word !

Yet he was her husband; according to his light he bad been

202 MOTHS.

generous to her; she would have to bear his children, and his name
was her name for ever. It would bo better if xhey could live in
peace.

When his friends had ridden back to Villicrs, and his sister was
still dreamily wandering through many musical memories, Sergius
Zouroff was standing on the terrace, looking seaward, and calcu-
lating how quickly his yacht would be able to come round on the
morrow from Cherbourg. Midnight chimes were sounding softly
from the Flemish carillon in the clock-tower of his ch3,teau.

Vere looked at him, hesitated, then rose and approached him.

“ Sergius,” she said in a low voice, “I spoke wrongly to you to-
day ; I beg your pardon.”

Zouroff started a little, and looked down in surprise at the proud
delicate. face of his wife as the moonlight fell on it.

“ You are not going to make me a scene ?” he said irritably and
apprehensively.

On the lofty yet wistful mood of Vere the words fell like drops
f>f ice. A momentary recollection had moved her to something
like hope that her husband might make her duty less penance and
less pain to her, by some sort of sympathy and comprehension. She
liad bent her temper to the concession of a humility very rare with
her, and this was all her recompense. She checked the reply that
rose to her lips, and Ijept her voice serene and low.

** I do not wish to annoy you in any way,” she said simply ; I
saw that I was wrong to-day ; that I had failed in the respect I owe
you; 1 thought I ought to confess it and beg your pardon.”

Zouroff' stared at her with his gloomy sullen eyes. She looked
very fair to him, as she stood there with the silvery rays of the
moon on her bent face and her white throat and breast ; and yet
she had lost almost all charm for him, whilst the ugliness of Jeanne
de Sonnaz kept his sluggish passions alive through many years.
He stared down on her, scarcely thinking at all of her words, think-
ing only as men do every hour and every century, why it was that
the pure woman wearies and palls, the impure strengthens her
chains with every night that falls. It is a terrible truth, but it is a
truth.

“ How lovely she is ! ” he thought ; “ her mouth is a rose, her eyes
are stars, her breasts are lilies, her breath is the fragrance of flowers ;
and — 1 like Casse-unc-CroClte better, who is the colour of coj)per,
and smells of smoke and brandy as I do 1 ”

That was what he was thinking.

Vere looked away from his face outward to the sea, and laid her
hand for a moment on his arm.

“ It is three years ago,” she said wistfully, “ I did not know very
well what I did ; I was only a child ; now I do know — I would do
otherwise. But there is no going back. I am your wife. Will

you help me a little to do what is right ? I try always •”

, tier voice faltered slightly.

MOTHS.

203

Her husband’&liaind came out from Lis thoughts of Casse-une-
CroQte and Duchesso Jeanne, and realised that she was asking him
for sympathy. He stared ; then felt a passing heat of sullen shame ;
then thrust away the emotion and laughed.

“ My dear,” he said, with the ‘cynical candour that was rather
brutality than sincei’ity, “ three years ago we both made a great
mistake. Every one who marries says the same. But we must
make the best of it. I am a rich man, and an indulgent one, and
tliat must content you. You arc a lovely woman, and a cold one,
and that must content me. If you bear me living sons you will do
all a wife wants to do, and if I pay your bills and allow you to
amuse yourself in your own way I do not see that you can coiniDlain
of me. The less we are alone, the less likely are we to quarrel.
That is a conjugal maxim. And do not make me serious soenes of
this sort. They tire me, and I have no wish to he rude to you.
Will you not go to your room ? You look fatigued,”

Vere turned away, and went into the house. Her husband
remained on the terrace sending the smoke of his great cigar out
on to the moonlit sea-scented air.

** She grows sentimental,^* he said to himself, " it is better
stopped at once. Can she not he content with her chiffons and her
jewels ? ”

The following day the Parisian contingent filled the chateau,
and from morn till night, the mirth and movement of a gay house-
party spoiled for the mistress of Felicile its woodland beauty and
its seashore freshness.

Never to escape from the world grew as wearisome and as
terrible to Vere as the dust of the factory to the tired worker, as
the roar of the city streets to the heart-sick sempstress. Never
to escape from it ; never to he alone with the deep peace of nature,
with the meditations of great dead poets, with the charm of lonely
and noble landscape — this seemed to her as sad and as dreary as,
to the women who surrounded her, it would have seemed to have
been condemned to a year without lovers and rivals, to a solitude
without excitement, and intrigue, and success. To have a moment
alone was their terror ; never to have a moment alone was her
torture. The difference of feeling made a gulf between her and
them that no equality of beauty and accomplishment and position
could bridge. There was no sympathy possible between Vere and
the pretty painted people of her world.

She had no standing-point in common with them, except her
social rank. Their jargon, their laughter, their rivalries, their
])leasures, were all alike distasteful to her. When she drove over
with them to Trouville at five o’clock, and sat amidst them, within
a stone’s throw of what the horrible pleasantry of society calls the
jolies impures, she thought the levee that the proscribed sisterhood
held on those sands was quite as good as the lev^e of the great
ladies around her. ••

204

MOTES.

In return women hated her. " She is sofc^f^^uchey* they said.
They only meant that she \Ya3 chaste, with that perfect chastity
of thought, as well as of act, which the whole tone and tenor
of society destroys in its devotees, and ridicules in the few cases
where it cannot he destroyed.

Only Jeanne de Sonnaz professed to admire, nay to love, her.
But then every one knew that Madame Jeanne was a clever woman,
who said nothing, and did nothing, without a reason.

“ Try to be amiable — if you know how to be amiable — with
Madame de Sonnaz,” had been the command of Zouroff to bis wife
on the first day that she and the French duchess had met ; and
Vere had been indebted to the brilliant Parisienne for many a
word of social counsel, many an indication of social perils, where
the stiff frivolities of etiquette were ondan geared, or a difficult
acquaintance required tact to conciliate or rebulT it. Vere believed
innocently and honestly that Jeanne de Sonnaz liked her, and was
angered with and rcjiroached herself for not being sufficiently
grateful, and being unable fully to return the regard.

“ I think she is not a good woman,” she said once, hesitatingly,
to her sister-in-law.

Madame ^^elaguine smiled a little grimly, with a look that
made her resemble her brother.

“ My dear, do qot bo too curious about goodness. If you
inquire'so much for it, it will lead you into as much trouble as tbo
pursuit of the Sangreal did the knights of old ; and I am afraid
you will not find it. As for Jeanne, she is always in her chair at
the Messe des Paressoux at St. Philii)po, she turns a lottery wheel
at fetes for the poor, and her husband has always lived with her.
What more can you want? Do not be too exacting.”

Vere vaguely felt that Madame Nelaguine thought anything
but well of her friend ; but slie got no more information, and
Madame Jeanne came moht days over to Felicito and said to all
there, “How lovely is Vera! — odd, cold, inhuman, yes; but one
adores her.”

One morning Vere, risen several hours before her guests, felt a
wistful fancy, that had often visited her, to try and find again
that little nest of fishers’ cottages where she had eaten* the cherries,
and heard Correze sing in rivalry to the lark. It was a wish so
innocent and harmless that she saw no reason to resist it ; she had
her ponies ordered while the day was still young, and drove out of
her own park-gates down to Deauville and Trouville, and through
them, and along the road to Villcrville. At Villerville she left her
ponies, and walked with no escort except Loris through the sea of
greenery that covers the summit of the table-land of Calvados,
while the salt sea washes its base.

The name of this little village she had never known, but,
guessing by the position it had been in above the sea, she knew
thatdt must have been somewhere between Grand Bee and Viller-

Moma.

205

ville ; and she follAwod various paths through orchards, and grass
meadows, and confficlds divided by lines of poplars, and at last
found the lonely place quite unchanged.

The old woman who had called him Saint Eaphael was knitting
by the fence of furze; the cherry trees were full of fruit; the
cabhages-roses were pushing their dewy heads against the tiny
roses of the sweetbriar; sunburnt children were dragging nets
over the short grass ; the lark was singing against the sky. No-
thing had changed except herself.

No one of them recognised her.

The old woman gave her a frank good-morrow, and the children
stared, but no one of them thought that this great lady, with the
gold-headed cane, and the old lace on her white skirts, w'as the
child that had sat there three years before, and drunk the milk in
its wooden bowl, and worn the w^oodcii shoes. She asked for a
little water, and sat down by the sweetbriar hedge; she was
thinking of Correze. IIo was seldom absent from her thoughts ;
but he remained so pure, so lofty, so ideal a figure in her fancy,
that his empire over her memory never alarmed her.

Ho Avas never to her like oilier men.

She sat and listened, with divided attention, to the garrulity of
the old white-capped woman, wdio went on knitting in the sun,
against her wall of furze, and chattered cheerfully, needing no
repl}''. They were hard times, she thought. People had said "with
the Ilepuhlic there would be no poor, but she could see no difference
herself; she had lived through many of them — meaning govern-
ments — but they Avero each as bad as the other, she thought.
Bread Avas always dear. ^J’he monies Avere plentiful this year;
the Republic had no hand in that ; and the deep-sea fishing had
been very fair loo. Did madame sco that lark? That little fool
of a bird brought her in as much as the monies ; a gentleman had
taken such a fancy to it that he came and saAV it was safe every
summer, sometimes oftenor ; and he always loft her five napoleons
or more. There Avere so many larks in the world, or Avould be if
people did not eat them ; she could not tell what there Avas about
liers, hut the gentleman ahvays gave her money because she let it
live in the grass. Perhaps madame had heard of him : he had a
beautiful face ; he was a singer, they said ; and to hear him sing—
she had heard him once herself — ^it was like heaven being opened,

Vcrc listened with undivided attention now, and her eyes grcAV
soft and dim.

‘'Does he remember like that?’* she thought; and it seemed
to her so strange that he should never 'have sought to speak to her.

“ Does he come for the lark only ? ” she asked.

“ He says so,” answered the old woman. “ Ho always takes a
l ose and a^ bit of sweetbriar. The first day he was here there was
a pretty girl with him, that he bought sabots for, because she had
lost her shoes on the beach. Perhaps the girl may be dead., I

206

MOTHS.

have thought so sometimes ; it cannot be onV for the larh ; and
he sits here a long time, a long time — and he L'sad. He was here
a day in May — that was the last.”

The warmth of a sudden blush came over her hcarci-’s proud
face. She did not know what she felt ; she felt a thrill of alarm,
a strange pleasure, a vague trouble. She rose at once, and left a
little money in the lean hand, as she bade the old peasant good-day,
calknl Loris from his chase of chickens, and began to retrace her
way to Villcrville.

^J’lie old woman looked after her along the flat j)ath over the
turf that went on under the apple trees, and through the wheat-
liclds, till it joined the road to Grand Bee.

“Now 1 think of it,” she muttered to her knitting-needles,
“that great lady has the eyes of that tired child who had the
wooden shoes. Perhaps she is the same — only dead that way — dead
of being stuffed with gold, as so many of them are.”

“ Granny, that is the Bussian Princess from Felicite,” said a
fisherman who was coining up over the edge of the rocks, hanging
his nets on the poles ; and saw the tall slender figure of Verc going
through the tall green corn.

“Ay, ay ! ” said the old woman. “Well, she has given me
a gold bit. Never was a bird that brought so much money from
the clouds as my lark.”

Her son L'lnglukl. “I saw your other lark in Trouvillo this
morning; he had come by the Havre packet from Kngland. lie
knew me, and asked for you all. lie said he would only stay hero
an hour on his way to Paris, but would soon be back again, and
then would come and see you. They took all my fish at the
llochcs Noircs, just at a word from him to the i)ortcr in the hall I ”

“yVen.s/” said the old woman thoughtfully, and she kept her
thoughts to herself,

“Where have you been, 0 ma Idle mafdndleV' said the
Duchess Jeanne, as Vere went up the steps of the sca-tcrracc to
enter the anteroom of Fclicitd, where the duchess, just downstairs
at twelve o’clock, was breathing the morning air in the most
charming of dressing-gowns — a miracle of swans’ down and old
Mechlin, with a knot here and there of her favomdto cardinal red.
She had passed the night there after a ball.

Zouroff was with her ; both were smoking.

“I have been a long drive,” answered Vere ; “ you know I rise
early.”

“ Where did you go ? ” asked Zouroff brusquely. “ I object to
those senseless, long drives in the country.”

“ 1 went as far as Villervillc,” she answered. “ I went to sec
a few llshcr-people that live on the coast near there.”

The hour before she would have said it without any other
thought than what her words e.viu'essed.

^ Now her remembrance of what the woman had said of Correze

MOTHB. 207

made her hesitate ifa little, and a certain colour came in her hice,
that both her husband and her guest noticed. It seemed to the
exquisite and loyal truthfulness of her temper that she had been
guilty of a thing even meaner than a falsehood — a reservation.

“It was where I lost my way the first day I was with my
mother,” she said; and turned to her husband, as making the
explanation only to him. “ Perhaps you remember ? Every one
laughed about it at the time.”

“I think 1 remember” said ZourolT moodily, “It could
scarcely be worth a pilgrimage.”

“Unless she have a caAe iendre du said the duchess

with a little laugh. “Oh, a million pardons, my sweet Vera ; you
never permit a jest, I know.”

“ I permit any jest if it be witty, and have no offence in it,”
said Vere very coldly. “If you and. the Prince will allow me,
I will go indoors; I am a little tired and dusty, and Loris is more
than a little.”

“You had no intention in what you said, Jeanne?” muttered
Zouroff to his companion, when Verc had entered the house.
“ You cannot possibly mean ”

“Mean! Of your i)carl of women, your white swan, 5 mur
emblem of ice V What should I mean V It amused me to sec her
l(>()k tingry ; that is all. I assure you, if you made her angry much
oftener, she would amuse you much more. Do you know, do you
know, mon vieiix, I should never be in the least surprised if, a few
years later, you were to become a jealous husband 1 How funny
it will be 1 But really, you looked quite oriental in your wrath
just now. Be more angry more often. Believe me, your wife will
ciitiu'tain you more. Especially as she will never deserve it.”

Leaving that recipe behind her, fraught with all the peril it
might bear, Madame Jeanne dragged her muslins and her Meclilin
over the marbles of the terrace, and wont also within doors to attend
to the thousand and one exigencies of a great spectacle which she
had conceived, and 'was about to give the world.

It was a Kermesse for the poor — always for the poor.

Madame Jeanne, who was a woman of energy, and did not mind
(rouble (she had been one of the leaders of a r6'jime that dressed
seven times a day), was the head and front, the life and soul, of her
forthcoming Kermesse, and was resolute to leave no pains untaken
that should make it the most successful hmey feir of its season.
She had alrendy quantities of royalties promised her as visitors.
Poor Uitron had j)lo(l;ed herself to preside at a puppet show;

“ toute la gomme ” would he golden lambs to bo shorn ; and all
the great ladies, and a few of the theatrical celebrities, were to
V-e vendors, and wear the costumes and the jewellery of Elcmish
X^casantry.

“ I have written to beg Correz'e to como, but ho will not,” she
said once in the hearing of Verc. “He used to be at Trourille

MOTHS.

208

every year, but ho never conies now. I suppo^q some woman he
tares about goes elsewhere.”

She was very provoked, because she wanted to have a grand
mass at Notre Dame des Victoires, and “queter” afterwards; and
if Correze would have sung some Noel or some Salutavis Hostia, it
would have brought hundrciis more napoleons into her plate for the
poor ; so, angrily, she abandoned the idea of the mass, and confined
liorsclf to the glories of the Kermesse.

Verc, to whom the mingling of the poor with a fancy fair, and
the confusion of almsgiving with diversion, always seemed as
painful as it was grotesque, took no heed of all the preparations, and
received in silence her husband’s commands to take a place in it.
Ho was peremptory, and she was always obedient. She wrote to
her people in Paris to send her down all that was necessary, and
after that ceased to occu})y herself with a folly she secretly disap-
proved; a mockery of the misery of the world which made her
heart ache.

The day before the first opening of this Kermesse, which was to
eclipse every other show of the sort. Prince Zouroff, with his wife
and sister, and most of their guests, drove over to Trouvillc to see
the arrangoincnts. Madame Jeanne had erected her pretty booths
in the glades of the Comte d’Hautpoul, and had had that charming
park conceded to h,er for her merry-go-rounds, her lotteries, jjer
diseurs dc bonnes aventurcs, her merry-andrews, and her other
diversions. Madame Jeanne’s taste was the taste of that Second
Empire, under which the comet of her course had reached its peri-
helion; but the efiect of her taste in this little canvas city of
pleasure was bright, brilliant, and picturesque, and the motley
colours in which she delighted made a pretty spectacle under the
green leaves of the trees. Every booth had the name of the lady
who would ofliciatc at it blazoned above ; and, above the lottery-
booth was written, ** Madame de Soimaz,” with a scarlet flag that
bore her arms and coronet fluttering against the blue sky." The
next was the Marquise de Meidlhac’s, green and primrose ; the next
the Countess Schondorff’s, amber and violet ; the next, of pale blue,
with a pale blue pennon, and the arms and crown in silver, was the
Princess Zouroff’s.

“ It is exceedingly jiretty,” said Vere, as she stood before, the
little pavilion.

There were about ten others, all in divers hues, with their
])ennons fluttering from tall Venetian masts. The avillions stood
about in a semi-oval where the sw’ar<l was green and the trees were
tall. Servants were bringing in all the fiinciful merchandise that
was to be for sale on the morrow ; a few gendarmes had been sent
to protect the fair during the night; some children, with flying
hair and fluttering skirls, and some baby-sailors, were at play on
the real wooden horses which the duchess had had down from St,
Clovvjh

Moms.

20d

It is extremeh^retty,” said Vcre courteously to tlio prujcclrcss
and protectress of it all, and her eyes glanced round the semi-
eircle. Immediately facing hers was a booth of white stripes aiui,
rose-colour, looped up with great garlands of pink roses ; the flag
above had no arms, but, instead, had a device in gold, a squirrel
cracking nuts, with the motto, “ Vivent leu hraconnkrs / ’’ It was
a device known to tout FariSf except to Vcre ; but even she knew
the name underneath, which she read in the glow of the late after-
noon light —

“ Mademoiselle Noisette.”

She stood in the entrance of her own pavilion and saw it. Her
face grew very white, and a haughty indignation blazed in her
grand grave eyes.

Madame Jeanne, standing by, and chattering volubly, with her
eyeglasses up to her eyes, saw the look and rejoiced in her soul.

“ It will be amusing,” she said to hcrseli*. How very angry
quiet i)coi)1g can be ! ”

Yore, licnvcver, disappointed her. She made no scene; she
remained still and tranquil, and, in a clear voice, gave a few direc-
tions to the servants who were arranging the contents of her own
stalls.

Madame Jeanne felt the pang an archer knows when, at a great
public fete, the arrow aimed for the heart of the gold, misses its
liiark, and strikes the dust.

It was to he chagrined like this that she, Duchesse do Sonnar.,
and daughter of the mighty Maison du MeriJhac, had slrelehcd her
Second Empire laxities so far as to permit on the grounds of her
own Kermesse the Free Lances of the Paris Theatres !

Nothing wavS said; nothing was done; ISladainc Jeanne felt
cheated, and her Kermesse seemed already shorn of its splendour.

Vero remained very calm, very still ; she did not move outside
the curtains of her own azure nest.

Guilt hath i)avilious and no sccrccy,” murmured the Princoss
Nadine, changing the well-known line by a monosyllable, as she
glanced across at the pink and white booth with its peccant squirrel.
But she murmured it only in the car of a tried and trusty old friend,
the Count Schondorff, who for more years than she Avould have
cared to count had been her shadow and her slave, her major-domo
and her souflrcdouleur. “I am so glad Vera takes it so well,” she
thought with relief.

A little later there came into the pink tent a handsome woman
in a black dress, with knols of pink ; she had a domc-like pihj of
glistening hair, gorgeous beauty, a splendid bust ; she looked like
a rose-hiied rhododendron made human.

It was Noisette, She bustled and banged about rather noisily
and laughed loudly with the men accompanying her, and scolded
the servants unpacking her packages.

“ rVd laj^etiteV^ said Noisette as she looked across tlie sw«rd

P

210

MOTHS.

at the azure pavilion. She always said the sa^ie thing when she
saw the Princess Zouroff.

In a good-natured scornful way Noisette pitied her.

The sunset hour wore away, and Vere had made no sign that
she had seen the name beneath the golden squirrel and the woman
whose badge the poaching-squirrel was.

Madame de Sonnaz was disappointed and perplexed. She had
seen the look in Vere’s eyes, and as she thought her cold, but not
tame, she wondered that she bore the insult so passively. She
drove homeward with them to dine at Fdlicito and pass the night
there.

“ Surely it will be a great success to-morrow,” she cried glee-
fully. “ 0 mon Dieu ! how tired I am — and how much more tired
I shall be I”

“ You are too good to the poor,” said Vero with an intonation
that the duchesse did not admire.

“ She will bo unbearable when she is a little older,” she said to
herself.

Vere reached her home, changed her dress for dinner, went down
with the light on her opals and in her eyes — which had a dark stern
look in them, new there — and bore herself throughout the dinner
with that cold grace, that lofty simplicity, which had gained her
the name of the Alpine flower.

suppose she accepts the thing with the rest,” thought Madame
Jeanne, as she sat on the right hand of Zouroff ; and she felt bitterly
angry with herself for having stooped to open the pavilions of her
fancy-fair to the dramatic sisterhood, even though it were in the
pure interests of charity.

After dinner when her people were scattered about — some play-
ing cards, some merely flirting, some listening to the choral and
orchestral music that the choice taste of Madame Ndlaguiiie had
always made a constant charm of the house-parties of Felicitd —
Sergius ZourolT, as he passed one moment from the card-room to
the smoking-room, was stoi)ped by his wife. She stood before him
with her head erect, her hands crossed on a large fan of feathers.

“ Monsieur,” slie said very calmly, though her voice was alto-
gether unlike what it had been on tho terrace tho^ night of their
return ; Monsieur, you desired me to take part iu the so-called
Kermesse to-morrow V ”

“ Certainly,” said Zouroff, and he stared at her.

I' Then,” she said, very quietly still, “you will see that the
pavilion of the actress, Mademoiselle Noisette, is taken down, or
’diflcrcntly occupied. Otherwise, 1 do not go to mine.”

Zouroff was silent from utter amazement. He stared at her
blankly.

“ What did you say ? ” ho said savagely, after some moments*
silence. “ What did you say ? Are you mad ? ”

, “ I think you beard very well what I said,” replied Yero, “ All

MOTHS.

211

I have to say is tl ,it if Mademoiselle Noisette be present I shall not
be. That is for ^ou to decide.”

Then, without any more words, or even any look at him, she
passed on into the music-room, and joined some other ladies.

Sergius Zouroff stood and stared after h(T. He felt much the
same emotion as his ancestors might have felt when some serf,
uhom they had been long used to beat and torture, rose up and
struck them in return. What did she know of Noisette? Ilo
supposed that she must know all, since she took no exception
to the two other actresses, who were permitted to take part in the
Ivormesse of the fjrandes dames.

He did not care what she knew — or he thouglit ho did not ; but
he cared bitterly that she should dare to aftroiit him and defy him,
dare to make him what he termed a scene, dare to erect her will in
op]JOsition to his own. And, amidst all the turbulerico oT anger,
self-will, was a sullen sense of shame ; ‘a consciousness that his life
was no more fit to be mated with hers than the lips of a drunkard
are fit to touch an ivory chalice of consecrated wine.

He sought his sister.

“ Nadine,” he said sharply, “ have you ever told Vera of Noi-
sette ? ”

Madame Nelaguine glanced at him with some contempt.

“ 1? do I ever talk? do 1 ever do anything but what is rational ? ”

'' Who has, then ? ” *

“ Has any one ? Probably le tout PariSf everybody and nobody.
What is the matter? ”

“ The matter ! She has made mo a scene. She declares that
if Noisette bo in her booth to-morrow, she will not go to her own.
She is not the ignoramus that you think,”

“After three years as your wife, Sergius, how should she ho?
1 am sorry she has begun to observe these things. I will speak to
lier if you like. Unless you will Avithdraw Noisette.”

“ Withdraw Noisette ! Do you supxwsc she ever listens to me ?
do you suppose I should not be tho laughing-stock of all society if
I quarrelled with her to please Vera’s caprices ? ”

“ If you annoyed your mistress to avoid insulting your wnfe,
society would laugh at you ? Yes, I suppose it would. What a
nice world it is,” thouglit tho Princess Nadine, as she said aloud,
“ I will see Vera. But she is difficult to persuade. And you Avill
pardon me, Sergius, but here I do think she is rather right. It is
not good form to liave Mademoiselle Noisette or Mademoiselle any-
body else of the same — adventurous — reputation mixed up with tts
in any affair of this kind.”

“Perhaps not,” said Zouroff roughly. “But Jeanne chose to
have it so. She thought they would attract. So they will, and it
is no more than having their carriages next yours in tho Bois.”

“ Or our lovers, and brothers, and husbands in their dressing-
rooms,” thought Madame Nelaguine. “You are not very just.

MOTHS.

Sergius,” she said ^loiid. “ Jeanno may liavo will of her own,
Noisette may have one, anybody; but not Vera.

“ Vera is my wife,” said Prince Zouroff.

To him it seemed as clear as day that all the diflcrence between
these women was thus expressed.

“You are quite resolved, then,” she said with some hesitation,
“ not to see any justice in this objection of Vera’s, not to give in to
it, not to contrive in some way to secure the absence of Mademoi-
selle Noisette to-morrow?”

“Nadine Nicolai vna ! ” cried her brother in wrath. “After
forty years that wo have been in this world, do you know mo so
little that you want to ask such a thing? After Vera’s insolence
1 wmuld drag Noisette to that pavilion to-morrow if she were
dying ! ”

“ Will you drag your wife?” said Madame Nadine, with a little
disgust ; but Zoiirolf had left her, and was ou his way to the
smoking-room.

“Ho is nothing hut a spoiled child grown big and brutal,”
thought his sister, with a little shrug of her shoulders. “How I
wish he had married a diahlesae like Jcaunc.”

An hour later, when the ladies all went to their rooms, Madame
Ndlaguine asked entrance for a moment atVerc’s door, and, without
heating about the bush, said simply —

“ My dear, Sergius has asked me to speak to you about the
Kermesse to-morrow. Now 1 tliink I know all that actuates you,
and I will admit that my own feeling is quite with you ; but it is
too late now to alter anything; Sergius is obstinate, as you know;
especially obstinate if he fancy his will is disputed. This objection
of yours can only lead to sceucs, to disjmtes, to differences, very
trying, very useless, and — worst of all — very diverting to otliers.
Will you not abandon the point? It is not you that the i^rcseiicc
of this person at tlic fair will shame, but himself.”

V(u-e licavd quite patiently; her maid, who did not understand
English, which Madame Nelaguine, like most Kussians, sixiko
adiiiirabl}'-, was brusliing out her thick bright hair.

“Jt was my fault not to attend more to the details of tlie
thing,” she answered ; “ but I had heard nothing of Mademoiselle
Noisette being permitted in the park. It is your brother’s shame
certainly, hut if I submitted to so public an insult as that, I should
be, 1 liuiik, scarcely liigher than Mademoiselle Noisette herself.
We will not talk about it; it is of no use; only, unless you
can tell me that her name and her flag are withdrawn from the
pavilions, 1 do not stir from here to-morrow. That is all.”

“Ahl” ejaculated Madame Nadine, very wearily. “My dear,
have you any conception of w’hat Sergius can be, can do, wdieu he
is crossed ? Believe me, I am not defending him for an instant —
no one could ; but I have seen twice as long a life as you have,
Vera and I have never seen any good come of the wife’s indignation

MOTHS.

213

in those cases. ^ciety may go with her for . the moment, but it
deserts her in the long run. Her husband is’ embittered by the
exposure, and he has always a strength she has not. The world
does not insist that a wife shall have Griselda’s virtue or Griselda’s
afl’ection, but it does insist that she shall have .Qriselda’s patience.
Koisette, and a thousand Noisettes, if your husband forgot himself
for them, canuot hurt yoit, in the eyes of the world ; but one rash
moment of indignation and rupture may be your ruin.”

Verc lifted her face, with all its loosened hair like a golden
cloud about it, and her face was very cold and contemptuous, and
almost hard in its scorn.

“Dear Princess,” she said very briefly and chillily, "I did not
wish to trouble you on this subject. You arc not to blame for
your brother’s vices, or for my marriage. Only, pray und/jrstiuid,
since we do speak of it, that my mind is quite made up. If
Mademoiselle ]Sh)isctte be permitted to be present at tlie park to-
morrow, 1 shall be absent. I was a child three years ago, but I am
not a child now.”

Madame N(51aguine sighed.

“ Of course you know everything, dear ; women always do, even
when nobody says a syllable to (hem. You are wronged, wounded,
insulted ; all that I admit with sorrow. P>ut what I want to per-
suade you is, that this method of avenging ypursolf will do no sort
of good. You will only give a triimii)h to Noisette ; yon will only
give a laugh to your fi‘ionds and your enemies — for friends and
enemies are so sadly alike in the way they look at one’s misfor-
tunes! My dear child, society has settled all these things; the
belles pet ites are seen everywhere except just in our drawing-rooms;
they will be soon there also, perhaps. Tho fiction of society is,
that wo know nothing of their existence ; the fact of society is,
that they are our most powerful and most successful rivals, and
dispute each inch of ground with us. Now, wise women sustain
the fiction and ignore the fact ; like soci(;ty. I want you to bo one
of these wise ones. It ought to be easy to you, because you have
no love for Sergius.’'

A very bitter look came for the moment on Vere’s face. She
raised her head once more with a very proud gesture.

“ Let us say no more, Nadine. I liavc self-respect. I will not
he a public spectacle vfs-arvis with one of Prince Zouroff’s mis-
tresses. lie can choose whether ho sees her in her t)avilion, or me
in mine. He will not see both. Good-night.”

Sorrowful, discomfoitcd, bafiled, but knowing that her sister-in-
law had justice on her side, though not prudence, the Princess
N<31aguine went to her own chamber.

” War has begun,” she thought; and she shuddered, because she
knew her brother’s temper. AVhcii he was ten years old she had
seen him strangle a pet monkey because the small creature dis-
obeyed him m its tricks.

214

MOTIIB.

Madame N^lagtiine awoke in tlie morning le'^visn wiin anxiety.
She was not a good woman, but she had honour in her, and was
capable of affection. She had begun to detest her brother, and to care
much for his wife. The day was clear and warm, not too warm ;
and a strong soft wind was tossing the white foam of the sea, and
\vould blow brightly on the pretty pennons of the Kermesse
pavilions. Vere rose earlier than any one, as her habit was, and
walk^’d out into the garden with Loris by her side. She was not
in any way anxious ; her mind was made up ; and, of anything
that her husband might say or might do, she had no fear.

“ At the utmost he could but kill me,” she thought with a little
contemptuous derision; ''and that would not matter very much.
No Herbert of the Border was ever insulted yet.”

She .walked over the grass above the sea, where the rose thickets
grew, and the whole coast, could be seen from Ilonflcur to the
Kochers do Calvados. It was rather a rampart than a ierraco, and
the waves beat and fretted the wall below.

It was only nine o’clock ; no one except herself rose so early af
Fdlicite.

As she walked a stone fell at her feet. A letter was tied to
it. Instinctively she took it up, and on the note slie read her own
name. She hesitated a moment, then opened it. The writing she
did not know. It Wijs very brief, and only said—

'‘Mademoiselle Noisette was called to Baris last night. The
Princess Zouroff is entreated by a humble well-wisher not to disturb
herself any more on this matter. Bhe can honour the Kermesse in
safety.”

Vere read it, and stood still in wonder. Could it be from the
actress herself ?

The writing was that of a man ; elegant, free, and clear.

She leaned over the grey stone wall of the garden and searched
the shore with her eyes. In a little skiff was a fisherman rowing
hard. She called to him hut he did not hear, or would not bear.
She did not see his face, as it was bent over the oars. " He must
have thrown me the letter,” she thought.

She felt rather annoyed than relieved. She would have been
glad to have had cause to strike the blow in public ; she was weary
of bearing patiently and in silence the faithless life of Zouroff.

“ If it be true, I am sorry,” she thought doubtfully, and then
felt angotod that any one should presume so to address her, and
tore the note in two and threw it in the sea below.

She went and paid her morning visit to her horses, to her hot-
houses, to the rest of the gardens, and at eleven returned with
neither haste nor interest to the house.

People were just downstairs ; being a little earlier that day by
reason of the Kermesse. The Duchesse Jeanne — already in her
FlciiiisH, dress with wonderful gold ornaments that she had bought
onch* zf a Mechlin peasant, an exquisite high cap, and bright red

MOTHB. 216

sfcoddngs and re^tt sabots — ^\vas very eagerly chattering, exidaining,
laugliiiig, frowning, vociferating.

Zourofif stood behind her, his brows as dark as a thunder-cloud.

When his wile came in sight a silence fell upon the group about
the wooden shoes of the duchesse.

Madame Kelaguine, whose grace of tact never deserted her,
turned and said easily and indifferently to Vere —

“ There is a great revolution in our toy kingdom, Vera.
^Tademoisolle Noisette, the actress, was called to Paris by the first
train this morning. The loss is irreparable, they say, for no one
could act Punch with a handkerchief and a penny wliistle like this
himous person.”

Vere was silent ; those who watched her countenance could see
no change in it. She felt for the moment both anger and disap-
pointment, but she showed neither.

Zourofl’’s face was very sullen. For the first time in his life he
had been baffled.

“ To whom do you accord the pavilion ? ” Vere said very
quietly to the duchesse, who shrugged her shoulders, and raised her
eyebrows in a gesture of despair.

‘*Tho committee at Trouville will have arranged it,” she
answered, ** There has been no time to consult us.”

Vere said in a low tone to her sister-in-law, '‘This is true?
Not a trick ? ”

“ Quite true, thank heaven ! ” said Madame Nelaguine. I havr.
seen the telegram — you can see it ; her director has a new pension^-
naire who is to jilay in her own great part, Julie Malmaison; she
was beside herself, they say ; quite raving ; nothing would keep
her.”

At that moment a note was taken to the Duchesse Jeanne, who
read it and then leapt for joy in her red stockings and her wooden
shoes. It was fi orn one of her male committee, who wrote from
the Union Club at Trouville.

“ Cori ezo has come,” she shouted. “ He was here an hour or
two yesterday, and promised them to return for the fair, and he has
returned, and they have got him to take Noisette’s place ! Oh
dear I the pity that we did not have the Mass ! — but he is inimi-
table at a fair, he always can sell any rubbish for millions ; and as
a diseur da bonnes aveutures he is too perfect ! ”

A slight colour came into Vere’s cheeks, which Madame do
Sonnaz noticed, although no one else did. Vere understood now
who had penned the letter; who had been the fisher rowing.

She was bewildered and astonished ; yet life seemed a lovelier
thing than it had seemed possible to her a few hours before that it
ever could look in her sight.

Sergius Zouroff said nothing ; ho had been baffled, and he did
not know with whom to quarrel for his defeat. He said nothing to
his wife, but when his eyes glanced at her they were very e*vage,

216 M0TJS8.

dull, and dark. He would have given half his Sfoftune to have had
Noisette still in Trouville.

“ Dearest Princess,” whispered Madame de Sonnaz to her, taking
her aside; “now this woman is so providentially gone you will
come, won’t you ? Pray do not make a scene ; your husband is
more than sufficiently annoyed as it is. It was all my fault. I
ought to have objected more strongly to the permission to hold her
pavilion, but you see the world is so indifferent nowadays, and
indeed — indeed — I never fancied you hnewP

A glow of impatient colour flushed Vere's face. She could bear
her husband’s inlidelitics, but she could not endure to hear them
alluded to by another woman.

“I will come,” she said briefly, “if you think it will prevent
any annoyance. The sole object of life seems to be to avoid what
you all call ‘ scenes.’ ”

“Of course it is men’s,” said Madame Jeanne. “ Women like
scenes, but men hate them; j)robably because they are always in
the wrong, and always get the worst of them. I entirely felt with
you about Mademoiselle Noisette, but I don’t think I sliould have
done as you did, spoken as you spoke. It is never worth while.
Believe me it never makes the smallest atom of difterence.”

“ Who told you what 1 did, what 1 said? ” asked Vere suddenly,
looking her friend full in the eyes.

Madame do Sonnaz was, for the moment, a little disconcerted.

“Only two people know,” said Vere; “Nadine and her
brother.”

“ It was not Nadine,” said the duchesse, recovering her com-
posure, and laughing a very little. “You ought to know by this
time, Vera — 1 may call you Vera ?— that your husband lias very
few secrets from me. Sergius and I have been friends, so long — so
horribly long, it makes me feel quite old to count the years since 1
saw him first driving his Orlofls down the Bois. 0, le beau temps !
Morny was not dead, Paris was not republican, hair was not worn
• flat, realism was not invented, and I was not twenty. 0, le beau
temps I Yes, Sergius told mo all about the scene you had made
him — he called it a scene ; I told him it was proper feeling and a
compliment to him, and he was extremely angry; and I was
wretched at my own Ihouglillessness. My dear, you are so young ;
you make mistakes ; you should never let a man think you are
jealous, if you are so.”

“ Jealous ! ” All the blood of the Herberts of the Border leaped
to fire in Vere’s veins. As she turned her fiico upon Madame de
Sonnaz with unuttervahle scorn and indignation on it, the elder
woman did that homage to her beauty which a rival renders so
reluctantly, but which is truer testimony to its power than all a
lover’s praise. Madame Jeanne gave a little tcazing laugh.

J -alous, my fairest ! why, yes. If you were not jealous why
should! you have insisted on the woman’s absence V ”

M0TIt8, 217

‘‘There can hi no jealousy whore there is only ahhorrence,”
Vere said quickly, with her teeth shut. “You do not seem to
understand; one resents insults for oneself. An insult like that is
to a woman like the insult that a blow is to a man.’'

Madame Jeanne shrugged her shoulders,

“ My love I Then we are all black and blue nous auircs. Of
course in theory you are quite right, but in jDractice no one feels in
such a way; or, if any one feels, she says nothing. But we will
not discuss it. Tlie woman is away. You must come now, because
you said you would occupy your pavilion if hers were taken down.
Wo do not take it down because there is not time ; but we have
given it to Correze. You know him — in society I mean ? I think
so?”

“ Scarcely,” said Vere ; and she felt a glow of colour come over
her face because she was sure that the note had come from him,
and that the fisher pulling his boat had been one with the lute-
player of Tenice.

“She has known him, and she docs not want to say so,”
thought Madame Jeanne, swift to observe, swift to infer, and, like
all cxi)cricnced people, always apt to make the worst deductions.

But the bells of the horses, haraessed like Flemish teams to the
breaks and other carriages, were jingling in the avenue, and the
tassel led and ribboned postilions were cracking their whips. There
was little time to be lost, and she reluctantly let Vere escape her.
As she drove along with Sergius Zourotf in his mail phaeton to
Trouville, she gave him her own version of Vere’s conversation.
She exaggerated some things and softened others ; she gave him
full cause to feel that his wife abhorred him, but she said nothing
of Correze, because she was a prudent tactician, and never touched
a fruit till it was ripe to fall.

“It was possibly merely my fancy,” she reflected, as in all the
whirl of her lottery, and all the pressure of her admiring throng,
she found time to cast many glances at the tent of Correze, and
saw that he was never beside his opposite neighbour. He was
everywhere else — a miracle of persuasiveness, a king of caprice, the
very perfection of a seller and a showman, dealing in children’s
toys with half the shops of the Palais Koyal emptied into his
booth, and always surrounded by a crowd of children, on whom he
rained showers of snarkling sweetmeats— but he was never beside
the Princess Zouroff. He had taken down the pennon of bToisette,
and in its stead was one with his own device — a Love whose wings
were caught in a thorny rosebush. He told fortunes, he made
liimself a clairvoyant, he mystified his clients, and made them
happy. lie was dressed like a Savoyard, and carried an old ivory
guitar, and sang strange, sweet little ditties in a dulcet falsetto,
lie was the Haroim al Easchid of the Trouville Kermesse, and
poured gold into its treasuries by’ the magic of his name and his
voice, the contagion of his laughter and his gaiety. But he tiover

21B

Moma.

once approached tho Princess Zouroff ; and nolono could tell that,
as he roamed about, with his five-year-old adorers flocking after
him, or prophesied from a howl of water the destinies of fair women,
in his heart he was always saying, “Oh, my wild white rose!
Why did I not gather you and keep you while I could ? You are a
great lady, and they all envy you, and all the while you are out-
raged and desolate ! ”

Vere sat in her azure pavilion, and looked fitter to he a Lily of
Astolat presiding at a tournament of knights. She bought most
of her own things herself, and gave them away to children.

The sun was strong, the heat was great, the chatter, the clamour,
tho many mingling and dissonant sounds, made her head ache, and
the bright -rainbow-like semicircle of tents, and the many colours
of the. changing multitude, often swam as in a mist before her
eyes.

Could it, after all, have been he who had warned her? She
began to doubt. It was too improbable. Why should he care ?
She told herself that she had been conjecturing a vain and baseless
thing. Why should he care ?

Ho was merely iln.'ro, in the pavilion that was to have been
Noisette’s, because, no doubt, all artistes were his comrades ; and
ho replaced the actress from the same good fellowship as he sold
roses at Madame Lilas’ stall, and ivory carvings at Oecilo Challon’s.
It could have been nothing more.

lie never approached her. She could see his graceful head and
throat above the throng, as he sold his puppets and his playthings ;
she could hear tlio thrill of his guitar, (lie echo of his voice, the
delighted shouts of his child-lroop, the laughter with which women
pelted him with flowers as in Carnival time ; she could see him
nearly all day long, as he stood under Noisette’s rosy garlands, or
wandered with jest and compliment through the fair. Put to her
he never came. At sunset he was missing. The flag, with the
Love caught in the thorns of the roses, was down ; a negro stood
like a statue cut in ebony between the pink curtains of Noisette’s
tent. It was a slave of Soudan who had long been a free man in
liis service ; a picturesque figure, well known to Paris. He did not
speak, but he had a scroll in his hands, a scroll that hung down,
and on which was written, ** Desole de vous quitter^ mats un •pauvre
luthier n'est pas maitre de soi-meme.*^

“ ft was charming of Correze,” said Madamo de Sonnaz. “ Very
charming of him. He had only twenty-four hours his own between
tho last night at Oovent Garden and tho royal fetes in Brussels.
And he sjieut those twenty-four hours in answering my call and
coming to help our Kermesso. Ho is gone to Belgium to-night. It
was really charming. And the use he has been ! the impetus he
gave I the money ho has got for us I I shall always be grateful to
hini.^

.^^hilst she spoke, she thought nevertheless, “ It is very eloquent

MOTHS.

219

tliat he shouLl noyeV Lave gone near her. They must understand
each ether very well, if at all. He never took all that trouble for
nothing, and no mere accident could have been bo perfectly
djjrojpos.”

The house-party and the host of Fdlicit^ dined at ten o’clock
that night with her at the ChSkt Liuloff.

Vere, pleading great fatigue, drove homeward in the pale moon-
light, through the cool air, sweet with the scent of the apple-
orchards and the sea. Madame Nelagiiine accompanied her : neither
spoke.

In Paris at that hour Mademoiselle Noisette, arriving hot with
the sun, enraged with the dust, furious at leaving 1 rouville, and
ready for murder if she could not have vengeance, burst, as the
hurricane and the storm burst over lake and mountain, into the
peaceful retreat where the director of her theatre passed his leisure
moments, and found that there was no new pensionnaire to play
tliilie Malinaison ; that her greatness was on the same unapproach-
ahlc ])innacle it had occupied ever since her dehut ; that her director
and her public alike were the most loyal and submissive of slaves ;
that, in a word, she had been hoaxed.

** Qui done d voulu me myslifier I ” she screamed a thousand
limes, and plunged into abysses of suspicion, and was only pacified
by promises of the Chef de Huretc and his myrmidons. But she
stormed, raged, cursed, wept, foamed at the mouth for half an hour,
and then — forgot the Prefect de Police, and let herself be taken
down to Eiighien-lcs-Baiiis in time for dinner by a German Mar-
grave, whom she ])illaged from patriotism, and with whom she
stayed a whole week.

The Ducliess Jeanne, excruciatingly tired as she was the next
morning, felt her spirits good, and her limbs clastic, as she got into
her red and black stripes and a rod cap — vrai lonnct ronyey as she
said — and displayed her skill in the waters of Trouville, and on
them with her canoe. She had got a clue to follow ; a mere misty,
intangible thread at present, but still something on which to spin
her web.

Ci)rreze was the hero of the adventure of the lost shoes and
stockings, and what adventure is ever so sweet in a woman’s life as
the first?” thought this experienced being, as she lay stretched
out on tlio waves, or made her canoe shoot over them. Corr6ze
comes for a few hours down here; that very day she drives ofl’
before wc are up, and makes her pilgiiniage to the place of the lost
shoes; when wc interrogate her she colours and grows angry; he
takes Noisette’s pavilion — Noisette’s, whom he detests— I have
heard artistes say so a hundred times. He is charming, he is ex-
quisite, ho is adorable ; and all within a few yards of Vere, to whom
ho nevertheless never speaks ! Something there must be. The thing
to do is to bring them near one another; then one v:ould see,
inevitably.”

220 MOTES.

And, lying on her hack on the sunny waffer^ she resolved to do
so. What did she want? She did not know precisely. She wanted
to do what the moths do to ermine.

CHAPTER XVIIL

PiiETTY green Tschl was growing d'lskj?^ in the evening hours.

Ischl, like a young girl, is prettiest in the morning. Its morn-
ing light is radiant and sweet; of the sunset it sees little or
nothipg, and its evenings are sad-coloured ; the moon seems a long
time coming up over these heights of pine-forest, but, when it does
come, it is very fair, shining on the ripple of the rai)id Traun with
the lights of the houses on the banks twinkling in the moss-green
surface of the stream, with every now and then a gentle splash
breaking the silence as the ferry-boat goes over from side to side,
or a washing-barge is moored in closer to the shore.

Ischl is calm, and sedate, and simple, and decorous. Ischl is
like some tender, fair, wholesome yet patrician beauty in a German
jncture, like the pretty aristocratic Charlotte in Kaulbach’s picture,
who cuts the hrerul and butter, yet looks a patrician. Ischl has
nothing of the belle lyelUe, like her sister of Baden, nothing of the
titled cocodette, like her cousin of Monaco. Ischl docs not gamble,
or riot, or conduct herself madly in any way; she is a little old-
fashioned still, in a courtly way; she has a little rusticity still iu
her elegant maniuTs ; she is homely whilst she is so visibly of the
finefleur of the vieille souche.

She is like the noble dames of the past ages, who were so high
of rank and so proud of habit, yet were not above the distilling-
room and the spinning-wheel, who were quiet, serious, sweet, and
smelt of the rose-leaves with which they filled their big jars.

Ischl goes early to bed and early rises.

It was quite quiet on this August evening. It was very full,
hut its throng was a polite and decorous one. Groups walked noise-
lessly up and down under the trees of the esplanade ; music had
long ago ceased from souuding; men and women sat out on the
balcoMCs with dimly-lit chambers behind them; but there was no
louder sound than a dog’s bark, or a girl’s laughter, or the swish of
an oar in the ri^er.

From the road of the north-east, and pver the grey bridge, with
its canopied saint, there came suddenly, with a sound of trampling
lioofs, whips cracking in air, and clanging post-horns, that harshly
broke the repose of the twilight hour, a travelling carriage with
fou; liorses, containing two ladies and a dog.

,.?’hG carnage had come fr<^«a Salzburg. It was open, for the

MOTES.

221

night was mild, ajiu, as a miracle of kindness, did not rain. A
man, leaning in a casement of the Kaiscrinn Elizabeth, recognised
both ladies and dog as the heavy landau rolled olf the bridge across
the road, then disappeared round the corner of the building. It
was followed by another carriage full of servants. The host of the
Kaiseriim Elizabeth with all his olTicials, small and great, precipi-
tated themselves into the street, bowing bareheaded, as the fiery
horses were pulled up before the door.

The quick twilight fell ; the valleys from dusky grew dark ;
the Traun water began to look like a shoal of emeralds under the
sLiiirays; a white round moon began to show itself behind the
hills ; the forms of peojfie walking on the banks became indistinct,
though the murmur of their voices and laughter grew clearer;
otherwise it was so still that he who leaned over his balcony and
saw the carriage arrive, could hear the s\yish of the barge- ropes as
the water moved them, and the sound of a big dog lapping in the
river underneath him.

“ It is destiny ! ” he said to himself. For two whole years
I have avoided her, and fate, taking the shape of our physicians,
sends us here !

He leaned over the balcony, and watched the water flo^ under
the shadows of the houses and the trees.

“ Is it Duchesso Jeanne’s doing ? ” ho thought, with that un-
reasoning instinct which in some men and women guides their fancy
to true conclusions. ‘‘That is nonsense, though; what can she
know ? And yet I remember, at that ball, after the Niiit de Maly
she seemed to suspect something. She laughed ; she told me I
alone could thaw ice ”

At that moment an Austrian march, stoutly brayed under the
windows of the Kaiseriiin Elizabeth, seemed to his cars to fill the
night with discord.

lie started to his feet with impatience and in suffering, as the
sounds grated in his ears, and- rapidly shut his windows one after
another, to exclude the sound.

“Where isAnatolc?” ho muttered irritably, as he paced the
dull chambers allotted to him. He had arrived only twenty minutes
earlier from Linz. He had not given his name, and for once found
a spot where he was not known by sight to all. Instead of his
servant, Anatole, one of the servants of the hotel tai)ped at the
door, and, entering his chamber which he himself had only entered
a few minutes before, presented him, with many apologies, a printed
document to sign. It was the schc<lule and exordium with which
Ischl, in childlike faith in the integrity of humanity — or astute
faith in its snobbery — requires from each of her visitors his declara-
tion of rank and riches, and fines him that he may support her
promenades and her trinkluillc according to his social means and
place.

He glanced at the paper absently, then took up bis pen. Uiider

222 MOTES.

the head of residence, he wrote Tin peu pario}^ ; under that of rank
he wrote artiste^ and under that which required' the declaration of
his name he wrote “ CorrezeP

Then ho throw down five napoleons to pay his fees. A droll
document,” he said, as ho pushed it away. '‘It displays great
astuteness; it never yet found, I am sure, anybody wliq sought
immunity from its tax by declaring himself cZ’w/? rang wferienr, et
hovR de. society, Ilcally, your tax-paper does credit to the municipal
knowledge of human nature.”

The waiter smiled and took up tlie gold.

“ Monsieur gives tliis for the good of the town ? ”

“ For the good of the town or the good of yourself,” said Cor-
r^ze ; “ according as altruism or ac(piisitivene,ss prevails in your
organisation.”

The waiter, perplexed, ho wed and pocketed the money.

Wait a moment. Shall I hear this noise every evening ? ”

“ The noise? ” The waiter was perplexed.

" You call it music, perhaps,” said (Jorr6ze. “ If I cannot ha\'c
my windows open without hearing it I must go up into the moun-
tains.”

Monsieur will hear it seldom,’* said the waiter. " It is the
chapelle de musique ; it serenades royal personages ; but monsieur
will understand that such do not come every day.”

" It is to be hoped not, if they have ears,” said Corroze. “ Who
is it that they are serenading now?”

“ The Princess Zourolf has arrived,”

" She is not royal.”

“ That is true, monsieur ; but almost. The Piinco ZourolT m so
very rich, so very great.”

“ He is not hero ? ”

** No, monsieur.”

“ What rooms do they give her ? ”

“ Tliose immediately beneath monsieur. If they had not been
engaged for the princess, monsieur should have had them,” said the
youth, feeling that this princely artist should be lodged like an
ambassador,

" These do very well;” said Con*5ze, " I shall not change them.
You may go now. Order my dinner for nine o’clock, and send me
my own man.”

Silence had come again, and the chapelle de musique had gone
its way after its last hurst of that melody which the great singer
called noise. The stillness was only broken by the sound of a
boat passing, and the murmur of voices from people sauntering
underneath.

Correzo threw himself into a chair that stood in the centre of
the room.

“I have honestly tried to avoid her,” be said to himself. " It

MOTHS. 223

TIis old and tried servant, Anatolo, entered, and began to unpack
his things. Oorr5ao raised his head.

** Put the guitar out,” he said, “ and then go down and see the
cook, and preserve me from what ills you can ; you know what it
is to dine where German is spoken*”

Anatole took out the guitar-case and placed it by his master,
then went obediently.

He opened one of the casements and looked out ; it had become
almost (lark ; the tranquil pastoral loveliness was calm and dusky ;
lights twinkled on the opposite bank and up amongst the woods ;
the nearer casements were bright and ruddy above the stream ; the
murmur of voices came from under the indistinct leafy masses of
the trees on the esplanade; the sound of oars in water made a
pleasant ripple. It was a little too much like one of the scenes
i)f his own theatres to please him perfectly ; he preferred wilder
scenery, more solitary places; at Ischl*the glaciers and the ice-
peaks, though really near, seem far away, and are seen hut by
glimpses. Yet it was so quiet, so innocent, so idyllic, it touched
and soothed him.

“ After all,” he thought, “ how much we lose in that hothouse
we call the great world.”

There was a balcony to his chamber. He leaned over it and
looked down into the one beneath ; there the dog, Loris, was lying,
the starlight shining on his silver-grey hair ; beside him on a chair
there was a bouquet of Alpine roses and a large black fan.

Corr^zo felt his pulse beat quicker.

Kismet ! ” he said to himself, and the dreamy charm of a
romantic fatalism began to steal on him. Pure accident has the
ruling of most of our hours, but, in concession to our weakness or
to our pride, wo call it destiny, and we like to think its caprices are
commands.

** Now she shall have a serenade in truth ; a better welcome
than from the chapelle de musique” he said to himself, and with-
drew into his own room and took the guitar out of its case — a large
Spanish guitar that he never travelled without, considering its
melody a fiir better accompaniment for the voice than any piano
could ever be. The organ has all the music of the spheres, and the
violin all the emotions of the human heart ; the organ is prayer,
the violin is sorrow. The guitar, though but a light thing, has
-passion in it ; passion and tenderness and all the caress of love ;
and, to those who have grown to care for it under southern skies
and summer stars, it speaks of love and sighs for it ; it has told its
tale so often where the fireflies flash amongst the lemon blossom r
and the myrtle.

He took up his guitar, and blew out all the many wax candles
lighted in his honour, and sat down in the dar^kness of his chamber.

Then he bt'gan to sing ; such song as no bribe could get from
his lips unless he were in the mood to give it.

224 MOTHS.

‘ Scarcely had the “first notes of that incomparahlo vpice rung out
clear as a golden bell upon the silent night, than the people saunter-
ing on the bridge and before the hotel, paused to listen, and turned
‘ to one anolhbr, wondering and entranced.

“ Who is that ? ” they cried to one another, and some one
answered, “Tluy say Corrbze came to-night.” Then they woie
quiet, listening, as in the north, where nightingales are few, i)eoplo
listen to them. Then several others from farther down and farther
up the street joined them, and people came from under the trees,
and from over the bridge ; and soon a little crowd was gathered
there, silent, delighted, and intent.

“ It is CoiTcze at his studies,” the people said one to another ;
and his voice, rising in its wonderful diapason clearer and clearer,
higher and higher, rang over the water, and held all its hearers
'Spell- bound. As a boat passed down the river the rowers paused ;
and as a long raft pushed its slow way tlirough the silver of tho
moonlit ripples, the steersman uiibiddcii, checkeil it, and remained
still, lest any sound of rope or of chain should break the ehatm.

The Princess Zouroff, wearily resting in the salon beneath him,
started as the first notes reached her, and rose to her feet and
listened, her heart beating fast.

There was no other such voice in all the world. She knew that
he was there as well, as though she had seen liis face. She went to
tlie balcony and stepped out into the moonligid wliorc the dog was,
and the roses and the fan were on the chair, and leaned against tho
balustrade — a slender white figure with ermine drawn about lier,
and tho moon rays shedding their silver arouiul,

lie was singing the “ Salve Dimara.”

She grew very pale, and her fingers grasped tho rail of tlio
balcony till her rings hurt her skin.

Yet how happy she was !

Tho river ran by, with a sweet song of its own ; the tranquil
town seemed to sleep ; the ])COple gathered below were hushed and
reverent ; the fresh glad wind that lives in Alpine forests swept by,
bringing the scent of the pine-wood with it.

lie sang on, the chords of the guitar filling the pauses of tho
voice with a low dulcet sound, as if some answering echo sighed.
The perfect melody was poured out as from some wild bird s throat,
seeming to thrill through the darkness ,and make it living and
heautiCul like tlie shadows of a night that veils the ecstasies of
Love. }^he listened with her head bent and her face very i)alo.
l-t was her welcome, and she felt, that it was for lier ; for her alono.

He sang the “Salve Diinara” of that living master, who, wliat-
mr his weakness or his fault, has in his music that echo of human
])assion and of mortal pain, which more faultless composers, with
their |mrcr science, have missed. Then scarcely pausing, he sang
from who music of tho “Fidelio” and the “Jphigenia,” music
fumiilar and beloved with him as any cradle-song to a child; and

. Moms, m

he let all hesi^ |o out ih his voidOj^itbat pbxa^ itself iiitQ lihe
silence of the summer 07e|iilp& ^ thoui^, Kke the ni^itingales, no
sang because his hmt Br^k ifhe»Vere silent* Then^ last of
all, he sang1ila£itirouHt^" io^gf.of Heines *the palm* tree

and ^he pine.- u -

Suddenly, with ot» d^tt plaintive chord' of tjie gpitar/as if its
strings were^ereaking with that Mt sweet sigh, his voice ceased ; as
the nightjn^le’s may c^aselall at.on€e,\when, aplidst tho^ roses, it
tires ofilts very plemtutfc of powerf. There wgs the sound of a
closing oasemeOt, then all was stilj.

’ /rpe^people, standing entranced below, were silent a moment or
tdro, 'Still JUt the trance of 'their wondenana'deHght ; then, with one^
^(QCprd,' i^outed his pame with such' a'welcpme as they neter
. gave to their own Kaiser. Tbe Kaiser was, great, but eyon hd
could not Oommand that voice at will ; and* they had liad the^
sweetness and tho splendour of it all to themselves here, by the
quiet Traun wat^i^, as if it bhHL*s-songapd more.

They cheered him so loudly, and sq loimiy called on his name,
that' he could do no less than advance M his balcony, and thank
them in theii^ own tongue. Then he bade them good-night, and
once more closed his window.

Below, Vere stood quite still, leaning back in the low chair with
her fan spread between her face and the upraised eyes of the
people. She felt tears fall slowly down her cheeks. Yet she was
almost happy.

The fresh forest wind, rising and blowing the green moonlit
water into rippling silver, seemed to echo around her the song of
Heine ; the song ol the palm-tree and the pine.

The gay brusque tones of Jeanne de Sonnaz roused her almost
roughly ; the duchess came out on to the balcony, muffled in a
cloak of golden feathers.

Mre, how charming! Of course you recognised the
voice ? and, to make sure, I sent the servants to ask. Now we
shall never be dull. No one is dull where Corr^ze can be seen. It
is too charming I And how divinely he sang. 1 suppose he was
only studying ; though he must know all those things by heart*
Perhaps he has heard we are undeineath him.”

She spoke in apparent ignorance and surprise, heedlesdy and
gaily, but her quick eyes read a look tbat came into Vera’s, and
for which she was searching. When she had suggested Ischl in
eAugust to Zouroff for hds wife, she had knoan from Vienna that
Corr^ze was to pass through there.

do believe it is as I thought,” said Jeanne de Sonnaz to
hersell ** Is it possible that h oon dieMe has found the fetits
after all ? It would be diverting— and why not f ”

When all Isohl awoke the next morning, the nay was brilliant t
the green river sparkled; coffee-cups tinkled on all the balconies;
the washing berges were full of white linen^ and of women^^rbo

226

MOTHS.

laughed as they worked ; ladies, old and youngs were borne down
the wsdk in .their chairs ; the little red and white ferry-boat trailed
along its rope, leaving a track of sunshine ; dogs swam ; children
ran about ; pretty women, with high heels and high canes, saun-
tered under the trees ; green and grey huntsmen went by, going
towards the hills to slay izard and roebuck. It was all sylvan,
tranquil, picturesque, Watteau-like. That there could be any-^
where a world full of revolution, speculation, poverty, socialism,
haste, and noise, seemed impossible.

At Ischl life may he still a voyage a Cythere; but not in the
reckless and frivolous fashion of other places. All remains calm,
placid, and touched with the graceful decorum of another time
than ours. The bright Viennese are gay indeed, as any butterflies
can be ; but still Ischl is Ischl, and not Trouville, not Monaco,
not Biarritz. It is aristocratic, Austrian, and tranquil ; and still
belongs to an age in which Nihilism and the electric light were
unknown.

** A place to doze and dream in, and how good that is ! ” thought
Corr6ze, as he stood out on his balcony an hour after sunrise.
^ What will the world he like when there are no such places ?
Horrible ! but I shall he out of it ; that is a supreme comfort.”

Yet, as he thought, so he did not realise that he would, ever
cease to be in the world — who does ? Life was still young in him,
was prodigal to him of good gifts, of enmity he only knew so much
as made his triumph finer, and of love he had more than enough.
His life was full — at times laborious — ^but always poetical and
always victorious. He could not realise that the day of darkness
would ever come for him, when neither woman nor man would
delight him, when no roses would have fragrance for him, and no
song any spell to rouse him. Genius gives immortality in another
way than in the vulgar one of being praised by others after death ;
it gives elasticity, unwearied sympathy, and that sense of some
essence stronger than death, of some spirit higher than the tomb,
which nothing can destroy. It is in this sense that genius walks
with the immortals.

CorrSze leaned over his balcony, and watched the emcrald-hued
Traun flow by, and the sun’s rays touch the wo6ds behind the
water-mill upon the left. His life was of the world and in it, but
the mountaineer’s love of nature remainqd with him. But it was
not of the woods or the waters, or even of the pretty women who
went by in their chairs to the Trlnkhalle, that he was thinking*
now. He was looking at the empty chair in the balcony under-
neath, and the fan that had lain there all night.

As he bent down and looked, a knot of edelweiss was fiung
upward, and fell at his feet, and a voice that he knew cried out to
him, Good inm:nmg, Oorr^ I You serenaded us divinely last
nighC ' Oonle and breakfast with us at ten o’clock. We Uvo by
cock iicro# here/’

MOWS.

227

The voice was the voice of Jeanne de Sonnaz, -who came out on
to the balcony tha't he had* been told was Vere’s. Astonished, and
not pleased, he returned some graceful compliment, and wondered
how it was that she was there.

The duchesse looked up at him and laughed ; her ugly face
looked prettier than* many pretty women’s. She was in a loose ’
white gown that was all torrents and cascades of lace ; she’ had a
real moss-rose over her right ear, and at her bosom ; she had little
Chinese slippers on, all over pearls, with filagree butterflies that
trembled above her toes.

** I cannot see you without craning my neck,” she cried to him.

" You will come to breakfast. You will meet Vera Zouroff. You
know her. Doctors say she is ill. I cannot see it. There waS
only one big salon free, so sbe and I have shared it. A j>retty
place. Were you here before? A little too like your own
d^cor de scene? Well, iiorhaps, a valley with a river and ch&lcts
always has that look — Ems Ifuis it. I think it is terribly dull. I
am glad you are here. Como to us at ten. We are all alone.

I shall expect you to amuse us.”

Correze said some pretty nothings with that . grace which
charmed all women; they talked a little of people they knew,
laughed a little, . and were very agreeable. Then the duchesse
went within, and Correze went for a stroll towards the llettenbach
mill.

‘‘Now I shall see what there is between them,” she said to
herself ; and he said to himself, ” How can that brute let her bo
with Joanne de Sonnaz ? ”

Yere, tired, and having had sweet strange disturbed dreams, had
slept later than her wont, then had gone out to the bath and the
draught prescribed to her ; she thought they were useless ; she felt
well.

Some one dressed in white linen passed her, and bowed low : it
was Corrdze. There was a child selling mountain flowers; she
bought them and carried them on her knee ; the jtolite crowd looked
after her chair and whispered her name.

The band was playing under the trees ; she did not hear it ; she
hoard only the song of Heine.

When she returned there was almost a colour in her cheeks ;
she had a gown of white wool stuff ''and a silver girdle of old
German work that had a silver missal hung on it.

‘‘ You look like Nillson’s Marguerite I ” said Jeanne de Sonnaz ;

** only you are too lovely and too haughty for that, my dear. By
the way, I have secured Faust. He will come to breakfast.”

“ M. do Correze ? ” said Vere with the colour leaving her face.

** Why ? why ? — ^why did you ask him ? ”

“ I asked him because it pleaded me, because he is charming,
because he serenaded us exquisitely; there are a hundred
causes.’ You need not be alarmed, my love ; Oorr^ goes c very-

228 MOTHS. ,

where, lie is a gcntlemaUi though ho is a sipger. We always-
treat him so.” ‘ '

Ycre said nothing; she was angered' with herself that she had
seemed to slight him, and she was uncertain how to reply aught.

The sharp eyes of the Duchesse Jeanne watched her, and, as
worldly-wise eyes are apt to “do, saw very much that did not exist
to be seen.

Vere jsstood mute, arranging her mountain flowers.

The servants announced Oorreze. '

Vere was not conscious of the trouble, the gladness, the vague
apprehension, and as Vague hope, tha-t her face expressed; and
which Jeanne de Sonnaz construed according to her own light, and
Oorreze according to his.‘

What will that diaUesse think ?” he said angrily to himself.
** A hundred thousand things that are not, and never will he true 1
. For his own part, the world had taught him very well how to
conceal his feelings when he chose, and, in his caressing grace, that
was much the same to all women, he had an impenetrable mask.
But Vere had none. Vere was transparent as only a perfectly
innocent creature ever is; and the merciless eyes of Jeanne de
Sonnaz were on them.

** You know the Princess Zouroff, I think ? ” said the latter
negligently. “ Wa^ it Vera, or was it myself, that you serenaded
'SO beautifully. An indiscreet question ; but you know I am
always indiscreet.”

“ Madame,” said Oorreze whilst he bowed before Vere, and then
turned to answer his tormentor, " truth is always costly, but it is
always best. At the risk of your displeasure I must confess tliat
I sang on no other sentiment than perfect exasperation with the
chapelle de musique. That I serenaded yourself and Princess
Zouroff was an accidental honour that I scarcely deserved to enjoy.”

*‘What a pretty falsehood, and how nicely turned,” thought
Madame de Sonnaz, as she pursued persistently : ** Then Vera was
right; she said you did not know we were here. Nevertheless,
you and she are old friends, I think, surely ? ”

Corrdze had taken his seat between them ; he was close to tlio
duchesse ; there was a little distance between him and Vere, whose
eyes were always on the flowers that employed her fingers.

** I knew Madame la Princesse a little, very little, when she
was a child,” he said with a smile. “ Neither acquaintances nor
court presentations before marriage count after it, I fear. Princess
Vera at that time had a sailor bat and no shoes — ^you see it is a
very long time ago.”

Vere looked up a moment and smiled. Then the sniile died
away into a great sadness. It was long ago, indeed, so long that
it seemed to her as though a whole lifetime severed her, the wife
*of Setgius Zouroff, from the happy child that had taken the rose
froijHiie hand of Corx^ze,

MOTHB. 229

** No shoes ! This is interesting.* I suppose they were dredging,
jitid she had lost herself. Tell me all about it,” 6aid the high voice
of Duchess Jeanne ; and Corroze told her in his own airy graceful
fashion, and made her laugh.

If I did not tell her some'tliing, Qod knows what she would
conjecture,” he said to himself; and then he sat down to th«
breakfast-table beside the open windows, and made himself charm-
ing in a gay and witty way that made the duchess think to
herself : “She is in love, but he. is not.” .'x

Tere saiblblmoS silent. She could not imitate his insouciance,
his gaiety, his abandonment to the inimediate ‘hour, the skill
with wliich he made apparent frankness serve as entire conceal-
ment.

' She sat in a sort of trance, only hearing the rich sweet cadence
of the voice whose mere laughter was music, and whose mere
murmur was a caress.

The sunshino and the green water glancing through tliQ spaces
of the blinds, the pretty quaint figures moving up and down under
the trees on the opposite bank ; the scent of the mountain straw-
berries and the Alpine flowers ; the fragrance of the pine-woods
filling the air ; the voice of Corrdze, melodious even in its laughter,
crossed by the clear harsh imperious tones of Jeanne de Sonnaz;
nil seemed to Vere like the scenes and the sounds of a dream, all
blent together into a sweet confusion of sunshine and shade ; of
silver speech and golden silence.

She had longed to meet him ; she had dreaded to meet him.
Month after month her heart had yearned and her courage had
quailed ; his eyes had said so much, and his lips had said nothing.
They had been strangers so long, and now, all in a moment, ho
wss sitting at her table in familiar intimacy, he who had sung the
Friere of Sully Prudliommo.

Her eyes shone with unaccustomed light ; her serious lips had
a smile trembling on them; the coldness and the stillness which
were not natural to her years, gradually changed and melted, as
the snow before the sunbeams of summer; yet she felt restless
and apprehensive. She wondered what he thought of her; if he
condemned her in haste, as one amongst the many bought by a
brilliant and loveless marriage ; if he Mieved that the moth had
forgotten the star and dropped to mere earthly fire ?

She could not tell. .

Corr^ze was not the Saint Eaphael who had given her the
rose ; he was the Corr^ze of Paris, witty, brilliant, careless, worldly-
wise, bent on amusing and disarming the Duchesse de Sonnaz.

Vere, who knew nothing of his motive, or of her peril, felt a
chill of faint, intangible disappointment She herself had no
duality of nature; she had nothing of the flexible, changeful,
anany-sided temper of the artist; she was always Vere, whether*
«he pleased or displeased, whether she were happy or unhi^jjpy ;

m MomB.

fSie wera with Hmg or pcasaat Ae was always what she
had heeii botn ; always Vere Herhett, never Vera Zouroff, though
bhutch and law had called her so.

'*She is like a ]>earl” thought Corr&se, watching her ; ‘'she has
nothing of the opal or the diamond; she does not depend on light ;
she never changes or borrows colour; she is like a pearl; nothing
alters the pearl — till you throw it into the acid.”

Meanwhile, as he thought so, he was making Jeanne de Sonnaz
shed tears of inextinguishable laughter at stories of his friends of
the Comddie Fran^ais; for in common with all great ladies, her
appetite was insatiable for anecdotes of the women whom she
would not have visited, yet whom she copied, studied, and, though
she would not have confessed it, often envied.

diable est entre” thought the Duchessc Jeanne, ruffling
the moss-rose amidst her lace, amused.

** Le diable n'enirerajdmaie^ thought Corr^ze, who guessed very
nearly what she was thinking.

Vero was almost always silent. Every now and then she found
his soft, pensive eyes looking at her, and then she looked away,
and her face grew warm.

What did he think of her? she was asking herself uneasily;
he, who had bidden her keep herself unspotted from the world ; ho
who had sent her tlje parable of the moth and the star, he, who fifled
her thoughts and absorbed her life more absolutely than she had
any idea of, had said nothing to her since the day he had bade her
farewell at Trouville.

Correze answered her in the same strain; and Yore listened,
trying to detect in this gay and amiably cynical man of the world
the saviour of Fere Martin, the artist of the lyric drama, the hero
of all her innocent memories and dreams. He was more kindred
to her ideal when he grew more in earnest, and spoke of himself
and his own art in answer to Jeanne de ^nnaz, who reproached
him with apathy to the claims of Berlioz.

" No ! ” he said with some warmth ; “ I refuse to recognize the
divinity of noise ; I utterly deny the majesty of monster choruses ;
clamour and clangoiw are the death-knell of music, as drajxjry and
so-called realism (which means, if it mean aught, that the dress is
more real than the form underneath it ! ) are the destruction of
sculpture. It is very strange. Every day art in every other way
becomes more natural and music more artificial. Every day I wake
up expecting to bear myself d^nigriKcA denounced as old-fashioned,
because I sing as' my nature as well as my training teaches me to
do. It is very olid ; there is such a cry for naturalism in other
arts — wt have Millet instead of Claude ; we have Zola instead of
Georges Sand ; we have Dumas fiU instead of Corneille; we havo
Meroi^ instead of Ca'taova; but in music we have precisely the
rever^p, and we have the elephantine creations, the elaborate and
pompous combinations of Baireuth, and the Tone school, instead of

Moms,

m

tile old sweet strsiiis of melody that went straight and clear to the
ear and the heart *of man. ^metimes my enemies write in their
journals that I sing as if I were a Tuscan peasant strolling through
his com — how proud they make me ! But they do not mean to do
so. I will not twist and emphasize. I trust to melody. I was
taught music in its own country, and I will not sin against the
canons of the Italians. They are right. Ehetoric is one thing, and
song is another. Why confuse the two ? Simplicity is the soul of
great music ; as it is the mark of great passion. Ornament is out
uf place in melody which represents single emotions at their height,
be they joy, or fear, or hate, or love, or shame, or vengeance, or
whatsoever they will. Music is not a science any more than poetry
is. It is a sublime instinct, like genius of all kinds. J[ sing as
naturally as other men speak ; let me remain natural **

“But you are too strong for it to matter what they say I**

Correze shrugged his shoulders.

“ I am indifferent. Indifference is always strength. Just now
1 do as 1 like, to be sure, and yet I have the world with me. But
that is only because I am Xhe fashion. There is so much more of
fashion than of fame in our generation. Fame was a grand thing,
serious and solemn ; the people gave it — such people as .ran before
Correggio’s Madonna, as before a heaven-descended thing, and made
Catherine of Sienna a living possibility in their midst. It was a
grand guerdon, given in grand times. It is ’too serious and too
stern for us ; we have only fashion ; a light thing that you crown
one day and depose the next ; a marsh light born of bad gases that
dances up to one one moment, and dances away the next. Well,
we have what we are worth ; so much is certain.”

“ Do you think we always have the fate we merit ? ” said Vere
in a low tone.

Correze looked up, and she thought his soft eyes grew stem.

“ I have usually thought so, Princess ; — ^yes.”

“ It is a cruel doctrine.”

“ And a false one ? Well — perhaps. So many side-winds blow ;
so many diseases arc in the air ; so many wandermg inspets, here
to-day and gone to-morrow, sting the plant and canker it — that is
what you mean ? To be sure. When the aphis eats the rose it is
no fault of the rose.’'

“ 2»ouroff' is the aphis, I suppose,” thought Jeanne de Sonnaz as
she looked at Y ere. Do not speak in parables, Correze, It is
detestable. A metaphor always halts somewhere, like an American
paper I read last week, which said, * Memphis is sitting in the ashes
of woe and desolation, and our stock of groceries is running low I '
So Vera complains of fate and you of fame ? — ^what ingraHtude I ”

“ Fame, ouchesse I ” cried Correze. “ Pray do not use such a
ffroa mot to me. Michael Angelo has fame, and Cromwell, and
Monsieur Edison, but a singer !— ^we are the most ephemeral of all
ephemeridse. We are at best only a sound— just a sound I When

232

MOTEB.

we have passed away into Hlie immemorial silences’ there is
nothing left of us, no more than of the wind that blew through
Covydon's pipe,”

‘'Monsieur Edison will tell you that Corydon’s pipe will be
heard a thousand years hence through the skill of science.”

‘''What horror I ” said Corr^ze. “ I think I never should havo
courage to sing another note if I believed that I should echo through
all the ages in that way.”

“ And yet you say that you want fame.”

“ I think 1 never said that, madame. I said fame is not a gift
of our times ; and if it were, a singer would have no title to it.”

“ You have something very like it at all events. When half a
city drags your carriage like a chariot of victory ”

“Caprice, madame; pure caprice,” said Corr^ze. “I have
happened for the moment to please them.”

“ And what do Caesars, and Napoleons, and other rulers do? —
happen for the moment to frighten them. Yours is the prettier
part to play.”

“ A sugar-stick is prettier than a ramrod, hut "

“ You do not deserve the Kaiserinn^s strawberries,” said Jeanne
de Sonnaz, tumbling the big berries nevertheless on to his plate.

“I never deserved anything, but I have had much,” said
Corr^ze. “ Even Madame de Sonnaz, while she scolds, smiles on
me — like Fortune.”

“Madame Vera neither smiles nor scolds,” said the duchess.
“ Perhaps she thinks Fortune and I have spoiled you.”

“ Perhaps she thinks me beneath both favour and scorn.”

Vere broke biscuits for Loris, and seemed not to have heard.
She felt herself colour ; for, though she was a great lady, she was
still very young. She could not follow his carelessness, easy banter,
and its airy negligence hurt her. If ho had sent her the jewelled
metaphor of the moth and the star, how could he be altogether
iiidillerent to her fate ? She had felt that the song of Heine had
been sung for her; yet now she began to doubt whether the
meaning that she had given to it had not been her own delusion ;
whether the eloquence he had thrown into the German words had
not been the mere counterfeit emotion of an artist, the emotion of
his Gennaro, of his Bdgardo, of his Pomeo. It is the doubt with
which every artist is wronged by those for whom he feels the most.
Vere, as she doubted, felt wounded and disillusioned.

Breakfast ended, the duchesse made him sit out on the balcony
under the awning ; she made him smoke her cigarettes ; she made
him tell her more anecdotes of that artist life which she was con-
vinced m«Bt be one long holiday,, one untiring carnival. ‘ Corrdze
obeyed, and kept her amused, Vere sat within the window making
lace, never to have her fingers quite idle.

Her heart jbad sunk ; the shining river and the bright sunshine
had g»<^wn dull ; the old heavy burden of hopelessness and apathy

M0TE8.

*233

had fallen on her again. She did not find her Saint Baphael, and
she listened with *pain as his laugh mingled with the Tshrill gay-
tones of the duohcsse. Every one seemed able to bo h^^ppy, or at
least light-hearted, except hersjjf; it must bo some fault in her,
she thought.

Corrdzc, even as his eyes seemed to glance out to the green
river, or to fasten admiringly on the fouillis and moss-roses of his
companion, in reality never ceased to see that figure which sat so
still inside the window ; with its white gown, its silver girdle, its
proud bent head, its slender hands weaving the thread lace.

‘‘ My ]3earl, that they set in a hog’s drinking trough 1 " ho
thought bitterly. “Alas, no! not mine! never mine! If only
she were at peace it would not matter, but she is not ; she never
will be ; they cannot kill her soul in her, though they try lij^-d.”

“But do they ever really pay Felix for their dresses,” the
duchesse was crying; “or do they not* think, like Sheridan, that
to pay any debt is a waste of good money ? ”

At that moment some Austrians of the Court were announced—
handsome young chamberlains and aides-de-camp — who came to
pay their homage to the Princess Zouroff and her friend.

After a little while the duchesse monopolised them, as she had
a talent for monopolising most things and most people ; and
Corr^zo, as he took his leave, found himself for one moment alone
before Vero’s chair.

Tlie duchesse and the Austrians were all out on the balcony,
laughing rather noisily, and planning riding parties, dining parties,
hunting, boating, and all other means of diversion that the simpli-
city of Ischl afforded,

Correze hesitated a moment, then touched the lace-work on her
cushion.

“ Work for fairies, Princess,” he said, as his fingers caressed the
cobweb of thread.

“ Very useless, I am afraid — as useless as the poor fairies are
now^adays,” she answered, without looking up from it.

“Useless? Surely not? Is not lace one of the industries of
the world ? ”

“Not as I make it, I think. It is better than sitting with idle
hands, that is all. When I have made a few» metres, then I give
them to any poor girl I meet ; she could make better herself, but
she is generally good-natured enough to be pleased ”

Her voice trembled a little as she spoke. Ihe artist bad made
so much of her mental and spiritual life all through the past
months, that it almost hurt her to have the man before her ; to her
he was th^ lover, the poet, the king, the soldier, the pr^het, the
cavalier of the ideal worlds in which he had become familiar to her.
It was an effort to speak tranquilly and indifferently to him as to
any other drawing-room idler.

“ It would not require much good-nature to be grateful foi ^any-

234 MOm&

tHng you said udth a smile. I am rather learned

in lace. 1 knew old women in Venice who ©ten showed me the
old forgotten foini italim. May I show it to yon ? It is almost
a lost art.” ^

* His fingers, slender and agile, IiKe the fingers of all artists, took
np the threads and moved them in and out with skill.

^ It is not man's work,” he said, with a little low laugh ; “ but
then you know I am an artist.”

“You say that as Courcy used to say *Je suis ni roi nij>rtnceJ ”

“ Perhaps ! No doubt les rots et les princes laughed at Courcy.”

“ I do not think they did. Courcy’s. pride always seemed to mo
so far above laughter.”

“ You do not look at my point italien, madame,” said Correze.

Insj;ead of looking down at his fingers with the threads on them
she looked up and met his eyes. The blood flow into her fair face ;
she felt confused and bewildered; the frankness of her nature
moved her lips.

“ I have wanted to tell you always,” she said hurriedly ; “ to
thank you*— you sent me that necklace of the moth and t^ star ? ”

Correze bowed his head over the lace.

“ You forgive my temerity ? ” ho murmured.

“ What was there to forgive ? It was beautiful, and — ^and — I
understood. But it was not my fault that I sank.”

Then she stopped suddenly ; she remembered how much her words
implied ; she remembered all that they admitted of her marriage.

Correze gazed on her in silence. It had been a mystery to him
always, a mystery of perplexity and pain, that the innocent, reso-
lute, proud nature which he had discerned in Vere Herbert should
have bent so easily and so rapidly under the teaching of her mother
to the tempting of the world. Again and again he had said to
himself that that child had surely had a martyr's spirit and a
heroine's courage in her ; yet had she succumbed to the first hour
of pressure, the first whisper of ambition, like the weakest and
vainest creature ever born of woman. He had never understood,
despite all his knowledge of Lady Dorothy, the sudden and un-
resisted sacrifice of her daughter. Her words now startled and
bewildered him ; and showed him a deeper deep than any of which
he had dreamed. "

More versed in the world’s suspicions than she, he saw the keen
glittering eyes of the Duchess Jeanne studying them from the
balcony, as she laughed and chattered with her chamberlains and
.soldiers. Ho released the threads of the lace^ and replaced the
pillow, and bowed very low.

“Yon do me too much honour, Princess,” he murmured, too
gently to them to reach the keen ears pf the brilliant spy of the
balcony* v f‘* To.aooept my allegory was condescension ; to interpret
ifc was sympathy; to forgive it is mercy. For all three I thank
you*>>^owine ”

MiKTBS. 23 S

He bowed tmt ber band, wbicb be scarcely toucb^, bowed
again to Madame*do Sonnaz, and^tben left the chamber.

Vere took up her lace-work, and began afresh to entangle the
threads.

Her heart was heavy.

She thought that he condemned her ; be seemed to her cold and
changed.

“How that stupid lace absorbs you, Vera!” cried Jeanne de
Sonnaz. “ The Empress has sent to us to ride with her at four,
and there is a little sauterie in the evening up there. You cannot
refuse.”

CHAPTER XIX,

The next morning Corr^ze, breakfasting at noon in the bay window
of the bright Speisesaal that looks on the three-cornered Platz, and
the trees on the esplanade, said to himself, “ I ought to go away.”

But he did not resolve to go.

The night before he also had been summoned to the Schlc^ss.
He was famous for his captiousness to sovereigns, but he had been
to this summons obedient, and had been welcomed by all, from
their majesties to the big dog ; and had taken*his guitar, and sung,
as he sang to please himself, and had been in his most brilliant and
his most bewitching mood. In truth their majesties, charming
and gracious and sympathetic though they were, had been of little
account to him ; what he had thought about, w’bat he had sung to,
was a tall slender form clothed in white, with waterlilies about her
waist and throat, as though she were Undine. He approached her
little; he looked at her always. The knowledge that she was
there gave him inspiration ; when he sang he surpassed himself ;
when he went away and strolled on foot down through the pine
glades into the little town, he sang half aloud still; and an old
forester, going to his work in the grey dawn, told his wife that he
had heard a Nix^ with a voice like a nightingale, down in the heart
of the woods.

He remained always a mountaineer at heart. The grey still-
ness and mist of the daybreak, the familiar smell of the pine-
boughs, the innocent forest creatures that ran or flew before his
feet, the gleam of snow on the peaks in the distance, the very mo$s
at his feet bright with dew, all were delightful to him, and brought
his boyhood back to him.

Yot his heart was heavy because he had seen the woman he-
could have loved ; indeed, could no longer deny to himself that ho*
did love her, and yet knew very well that she was as utterly lost
him as though she had been a wfaitkof the mouptain snow
would vanish at touch of the sunrisa, - ^ ^ ^ '

236 MOTHS.

All tMngs were well witli him, and fortune spoiled him, as he

liad said.

As he sat at breakfast in the wide sunny window, and opened
his “ Figaro,” he read of the alTec^n of Paris for hiin, the regret
of a world which has, like a bcautmil woman, so many to teach it
forgetfulness, that any remembrance in absence is unusual homage.
A courtier brought him from the court a silver casket of old niello
work inlaid with precious stones, and having a miniature by Peni-
caudius in the lid, and, what he cared for more, a bidding from the
Kaiser to hunt chamois amongst the ice-peaks of the Dachstein at
daybreak on the morrow. The post arriving brought him little
scented letters which told him, in language more or less welcome,
that the universal regret of the many was shared in deeper and
tenderer sentiment by the few ; and some of these could not fail to
charm Iiis vanity, if they failed to touch his heart. Yet ho had
not much vanity, and he wAs used to all these favours of peoples,
of sovereigns, of beauties. They rained on him as rose-leaves rain
•on grass in midsummer ; and it was the height of summer with
him, and none of his rose-leaves were faded. Still

“ I ought to go,” he thought, and that thought absorbed him.
lie discerned the influence his presence had on Vere. He knew
too well his power on women to mistake its exercise. He saw
what she had not seen herself ; he had long endeavoured to avoid
])cr; he had long feared for them both, the moment when the
accidents of society should bring them in contact. No vanity and
no selfishness moved him; but an infinite compassion stirred in
him, and an infinite sorrow.

If I let myself love her, my life will be ruined. She will
never be as others have been. There will he nothing between us
ever except an immense regret.” So he thought as he sat looking
out [on the sunshine that played on the silver and gold of the
omperor’s casket.

At that moment they brought him from Madame de Sonnaz a
note bidding him dine with her that night. Corr^ze penned in
reply a graceful excuse, pleading that he was to set out for the
Dachstein at nightfall. “ Who shall say that we need Nihilism,”
he wrote in conclusion, “when a public singer scales* ice-peaks with
a Kaiser ? ”

His answer despatched, ho lit another cigar, and watched the
Traun water gleam under the old grey arches of the bridge.

“ So she thinks I shall help her to her vengeance on Sergius
^ouroff,” he thought. “ Vous Stes mal tombee, duchesse I ”

August noontide is cool enough in the duchy of Salzburg ; he
did not feel in the mood for the chatter of the casino an^l the
humours of the Trinkhailo; for the pretty women in their swinging
chairs, and whist and 4cdri6 in the river balconies ; there were half
a hundred x^ple here who in another half hftur would seize on Mm
beyond,, escape, as they trooped back from their morning exercise

MOTm 2Z%

and baths. He bethought himself of an offer of horses made him
by a Grand Duke staying there, sent a line to the Duke’s equerry^
and, before his acquaintances had returned from the Triukhallc,
was riding slowly out on a haMsome Hungarian mare, taking his
road by chance, as he paced out of the little town, following tlitv
ways of the Traun as it flowed along towards Styria, with tho
wood-clothed hills rising to right and left.

There is a noble road that runs through tho Weissbach Thai to
tho lake of Atterseo. It is sixteen miles or more of forest roadway.
Tho woods are grand, the trees are giants, moss-grown with age,
and set in a wilderness of ferns and flowers ; the Weisbach rushes
through them white with perpetual foam; tlio great hills are half
light, half gloom beyond the branches, and there is the grey of
glaciers, the aerial blue of crevasses, for ever shining behind the
forest fuliagc, where the clouds lie on the mountains, where summer
lightnings flash and summer rains drift like mist. The place is full
of birds, and all wild woodland creatures; there is scarcely a habi-
tation from one end of the road to the other. Where any wood has
been cleared, there are tracks of lilac heather, a^d of broom ; hero
and there is a cross telling of some sudden death from flood, or frost,
or woodman’s misadventure ; under the broad drooping branches of
the Siberian pines, countless little streams rise and bubble through
tho grasses ; and at tho end of it all there is .the blue bright lake,
blue as a mouse-ear, bright as a child’s eyes ; the largest lake in alJ
Austria ; the Attersoe.

War-worn Europe has little left that is more beautiful than that
grand tranquil solitary forest-ride, with that azure water for its goal
and crown.

The Attersee is very lovely, blue as the Mediterranean;
radiantly, wonderfully blue; sweeping away into the distance to
the Scliaflberg range, with white-sailed boats upon it, and hero and
there, alas ! the trail of a steamer as the vessels go to and from
Unterach and Steinhach and Nussdorlf.

At Weissbach tho meadows go close down to the water, meadows
of that rich long flower-filled grass that is the glory, of Austria and
grows all about the little white stone quays ; the boats come up to
the edge of the meadows, and the rowers, or those who sail in them,
land in that knee-deep grass, under the shade of beech trees.
There is a little summer inn on the shore, with balconies and bang-
ing creepers ; it is modest and does not greatly hurt the scene ; the
hills rise sheer and bold above it. A little higher yet are the
mountains of the Hochlaken and Hocllen ranges, where you can
shoot, if you will, the golden eagle and the vulture.

Corr^ze, beguiled by the beauty of the road, followed it leisurely,
till it led him to the Attersee in some two hours’ time. There he
dismounted and strolled about. ,Jt was not very often that he had
leisure for long quiet hfiurs in the open air, but he always enjoyed
them ; he felt angry with himself that in this pure atmospliefe) m

^38 MOTHS.

this serene loveliness, ho remained dissatisfied ^d ill at ease*—
beeattse ho was alone.

Do what he would he could not forget the grand troubled eyes
of Vere, and the accent of her voite when she had said, It was
not my fault that I sank ! ”

** Nothing could ever be her fault,” he thought, “ yet what could
they do to her so quickly ? What force could her mother use ? ”

He left the mare in the inn stable for rest, and wandered up
into the higher slopes of the hills, leaving the lake with its boats
that came and went, its meadows, dotted with human butterflies,
its little landing-place with flags flying. “The forest-road is
grander,” he said, and told his groom to lead the horse back after
him when it was rested; ho meant to return to Ischl on foot.
Fifteen miles of woodland on a summer afternoon is more charming
out of saddle than in it.

” With a horse one must go so terribly straight,”, be thought to
himself ; “ it is the by-paths that are the charm of the forest ; the
turning to left or to right at one’s whim ; the resting by the way,
the losing oneself <cverv, and the chance of passing the night under
the stars; the pleasure of being young again at our old ecoU huis-
sonihre. All that is inevitably lost when one rides.”

So he turned his back on the blue Attersco, and walked borne
along the dale, that - seemed a path of green and gold as the sun-
beams of afternoon shone through the trees.

There is a part that is mere moorland, where the pines have
been felled and the heather grows alone ; the sandy road track runs
between the lilac plumes, lying open to the light for a little while
before it plunges again into the deep sweet shadows of the forest
growth. On the crest of that more open part he saw two human
figures and a dog ; they were dark and colourless against the bright
afternoon light, yet, in an instant, ho recognised them— they were
the figures of Vero and of a liussian servant.

In a few moments he could overtake them, for they moved
slowly. He hesitated— doubted — said to himself that he would do
best to turn back again whilst ho was still unseen. At that
moment Vere paused, looked behind her to see the sun going
towards its setting above the mountains, and saw also himself.

He hesitated no more, but approached her.

Ho saw that delicate colour, that was like the hue of the wild
rose be had once given her, come into her face ; but she gave him
her hand simply and cordially, and be bowed over it with his head
uncovered.

“You have been to the lake. Princess? So have I; but the
forest is better. The Attersee has too many people by it, and I
saw a funsid in the distance— ail illusion was destroyed.”

“ Thjilpamers make the tour of it, unhappily. But this forest
road is P^ect I send my ponies <)n to Wait for me by the
clause^— and you ? ”

MOTES.

289

I have left my horse, or rather Duke Ludvdg’s horse, to follow
me. She is a young mare, and needs one*s attention, which spoils
the pleasures of the wood. What a grand country it is I If it did
not rain so often it would be Arcadia. Are you strong enough to
walk so far, madame ? ”

The ‘‘madame” hurt [him to say, and hurt her to hear. She
answered, a little hurriedly, that she liked walking — it never hurt
lior — ^in Paris she could walk so little, that tired her far more* And
CorrSze, unasked but unrepulsed, strolled on beside her ; the grim
white-bearded servant behind them.

She was dressed with perfect simi:)licity in something cream-
hued and soft, but he thought that she looked lovelier than she had
done even in her jewels and her nenuphars at night

“ 0 gioveniUf primavera della vita I ” he thought. “ Even a
tyrant like the Muscovite cannot altogether spoil its glories.'’

They had come now into the fragrant gloom of the forest, where
the trees stood thick as bowmen in a light in olden daj’-s, and
the mountains rose behind them stern and blue like tempest-clouds,
while the silence was full of the fresh sound of rushing waters.

Loris was darting hither and thither, chasing hares, scenting
foxes, starting birds of all species, but never going very far afield
from his mistress.

They walked on almost in silence — the woodland had that
beauty amidst which idle speech seems a sort of profanation — and
Oorr^ze was musing —

“ Shall 1 tell her the truth, and frighten her and disgust her,
and never see her face again, except across the gas-glare of the
Grand Opdra ? Or shall I keep silence, and try and deserve her
trust, and try and be some shield between her and the world they
have cast her into ; and become in time, perhaps, of some aid and
service to her ? One way is selfish and easy ; the other ”

He knew himself, and knew women, too well to be blind to any
of the dangers that would befall both in the latter course ; but an
infinite compassion was in him for this young and beautiful
woman ; a deep tenderness was in him for her — ^mournful and wist-
ful-quelling passion. He for ever reproached himself that ho
had not followed his impulse, and cast prudence to the winds, and
stayed by the gray northern sea and saved her, whilst yet there
had been time, from the world and from her mother.

They paced onward side by side.

The old man-servant followed with a frown on his brows. lie
knew Corr^ze by sight, he had seen all Petersburg wild with adora-
tion of their idol, running before his sledge, and strewing fiowers
and evergreens on the frozen earth in his honour ; but he did hot
think it fitting for a mere foreign singer to walk side by side with
the Princess^ Zoun^* Nevertheless, he kept respectfully his due
distance behind them, marvelling* only whether it would lie within
his duty to tell his master of this strange summer day's stroU.

MOTR^.

•24C

“Madame de Bonnaz Is not with you to-day?” Corr^ze was
saying as he roused himself from his meditation.'

Vere answered him: “No. She has many other friends in
Ischl ; she is with the Archduchess Sophie.”

“ Ah ! You like Madame .de Sonnaz ? Of course you do, since
you travel together.”

“ She offered to come with me. M. Zouroff accepted for me. It
was very kind of her.”

“ Bah I And that is the way they trick you, and you never
dream of their shame ! ” thought Corr^ze, as he merely said aloud,
“The duchesse is very witty, very charming; she must be an
amusing companion — when she is in a good humour ! ”

“ You do not like her ? You seemed as if vou did yesterday.”

It was a little reproach that unconsciously escaped her. His
gallantries and his persiflage at the breakfast had hurt her too much
for her to so soon forget them.

“ I like her as I like all her world,” said CorrSzo. “ I like her
with my intelligence infinitely ; with my heart, or what does duty
for it, I abhor her.”

“ You separate intelligence and feeling, then ? ”

“ By five thousand leagues I Will M. Zouroff join you here ? ”

“ He will meet ns at Vienna ; Madame do Sonnaz is going tc
stay with me at Svir.”

“ You will be long in Russia? ”

“ Oh no ; the two next months, perhaps.”

“ But so much long travel ; does it not tire you, since you are
not strong ? ”

“ I think I am strong enough. It is not that ; I am tired — but
it is of being useless.”

She wmld have said joyless and friendless too, but she knew
that it was not well for any lamentation to escape her wddeh could
seem to cast blame upon her husband, or ask pity for herself.

“ I am as useless as the lace I make,” she said more lightly, to
take weight off her words. “ There is so much routine in the life
we lead ; I cannot escape from it. The days are all swallowed up
by small things. When I was a child, and read of the old etiquette
of Versailles, of the grand convert and the petit convert ^ and the
tree petit convert, and all the rest of the formal divisions of the
hours, I used to think how terrible it must have been to be the king ;
but our lives are much the same, they are divided between petits
converts and grands converts, and there is no other time left.”

“ Yes, our great world is much like their great world — only with
the dignity left out ! ” said Corrdze, as he thought —

No head but some world genius should rest
Above the treasures of fibat perfect breast.

• Yet thou art bound —

O waste of nature I — ^to a shameless hound ;

To shameless lust ! . ■ • Athene to a Satyr.

M0TE8.

mi

*‘And how did they make her take the Satyr he mused.
She is not a reed to be blown by any wind, nor yet a clay to be
moulded by any hand. What force did Miladi Dolly use ? ”

“ It is very difficult to be of much use,” Vere said once more
as she walked on ; they say one does more harm than good by
charity, and what else is there?”

“Your own peasantry? In those Russian villages there must
be so much ignorance, so much superstition, so little comprehension

of the value of freedom or morality ”

“ ^ly husband does not like me to interfere with the peasantry ;
and, beside, I am so rarely in that country. The little I can do, I
do in Paris. Ah ! ” She interrupted herself with a sudden remem-
brance, and a smile beamed over her face, as she turned it to
Corr^ze. “ I know Pere Martin and his daughter ; how they love
you I They told me everything. What simple good creatures
they are ! ”

Corr^zo smiled too.

“ They are like the public — ^they over-estimate me sadly, and
their enthusiasm dowers me with excellencies that I never pos-
sessed. How came you to find that father and daughter out,
Princess ? I thought they lived like dormice.”

She told him the little tale ; and it drew them together, and
made them more at ease one with another by its community of
interest, as they moved slowly down the woddland road through
the leafy dusky shadows. For in the heart of each there was a
dread that made them nervous. She thought always : “ If only he
will si)are me my husband^s name.” And he thought : “ If only
she would never speak to me of her husband 1 ”

Memories were between them that held them together, as the
thouglit of little dead children will sometimes hold those who have
loved and parted for ever.

He longed to know what force, or what temptation, had brou^t
her to this base and joyless marriage ; but his lips were shut. He
had saved her from the insiilt of Noisette, but ho thought she did
not know it ; ho went yearly to hear the lark sing on the head of
the cliff where he had gathered her rose, but he thought she knew
nothing of that either. Yet the sense of these things was between
them ; and he dared not look at her as he went on down the moun-
tain road.

She was thinking always of his bidding to her, when she had
been a child, to keep unspotted from the world. She longed to tell
him that she had not stooped to the guilt of base vanities when she
had given herself to Sergius Zouroff, but her lips were shut.

I must not blame my mother, nor my husband,” she thought.
Her cheeks burned as she felt, since he had saved her from the
outrage of the Kermesso, that he must know the daily insults of
her life. She was troubled, confused, oppressed; yet the chaim
of his presence held her like an incantation. She went slowly

B

242 MOTHS.

through the grand old wood, as.»penser’s heroines through en*
chanted forests, •* ' ' • .

** You said that you like Madame de Sonnaz ? ” he asked again
abruptly,

“She is very agreeable,” she said, hesitatingly; “and she is
very good-natured to me ; she reminds me of many things that I
displease Prince Zouroff ii;; mere trifles of ceremonies and obser-
vances that I forget, for I am very forgetful, you know.”

“ Of little things, perhaps ; thoughtful people often are. Big
brains do not easily hold trifles. ,So Madame de Sonnaz plays the
part of Mentor to you about these little packets of starch that the
beau monde thinks are the staff of life? That is kind of her, for I
think no one ever more completely managed to throw the starch
over their loft shoulder than she has done 1 ”

“ You do not like her ? ” ‘

“ Oh ! one always likes great ladies and pretty women. Not
that she is pretty, but she has du charme^ which is perhaps more.
All I intended to say was, that she is not invariably sincere, and it
might be as well that you should remember that, if she be intimate
enough with you to give you counsels ”

“ My husband told me to always listen to, and follow what she
said. Ho has, I believe, a great esteem for her.”

Corr^ze swore an oath, that only a foxglove heard, as he stooped
to gather it, Thorb was a great disgust on his mobile face, tLat
she did not see, as he was bonding down amongst the blossoms.

“ No doubt,” he said briefly ; “ esteem is not exactly what the
Duchesse Jeanne has inspired or sought to inspire ; but M. Zouroff
possibly knows her better than I can do ”

“But is she not a good woman?” Yere asked, with a little
sternness coming on her delicate face.

Oorr^ze laughed a little ; yet there was a great compassion in
his eyes as he glanced at her.

“ Good ? Madame Jeanne ? lam afraid she would Laugh very
much if she heard you. Yes; she is very good for five minutes
after she has left the confessional — for she docs go to confess, though
I cannot imagine her telling truth there. It would be trap hour-
geoise,'^

“ You speak as if she were indeed not good ! ”

“Good? bad? If there were only good and bad in this world
it would not matter so much,” said Corr^ze a little recklessly and
at random. “ Life would not be such a disheartening affair as it is.
Unfortunately the majority of people are neither one nor the other,
and have little inclination for either crime or virtue. It would bo
almost as absurd to ceindemm them as to admire them. . They are
like tracks of shifting ^nd, in which nothing good or bad can tako
root. To me they are ^paore .despairing to contemplare, than the
darkest depth of evil ; oult^of that may come such hope as comes of
redemption and remorse, but in the vast, frivolous, featureless mass.

MOfM. 248

of society there Is p.q h^e. It. as' like a feather bed, in which the
finest steel must; Jose point and powey ! ”

“ But is the Duchess^ de Sonnaz characterless ? iTrivolous,
perhaps, but surely "^not * characterless ? ” said Yere, with that
adherence to the simple point of argument and rejection of all dis-
cursiveness which had once made her the despair of her mother.

** See for yourself, Princess,” said CorxSze suggestively. “ \^at
she has, or has not, of character may well become your study.
When we are intimate with any person it is very needful to know
them well ; what one’s mere acquaintances are matters little, one
can no more count them than count the gnats on a summer day ;
but about our fJiends we cannot be too careful,”

“ She is not my friend ; I have not any friend.”

There was a loneliness and a melancholy in the simplicity of
the words that was in pathetic contrast with that position wnich so
many other women envied her.

Tender words, that once said could never have been withdrawn,
and would have divided him from her for ever, rose to the lips of
Correze, but he did not utter them ; he answered her with equally
simple seriousness —

“ I can believe that you have not. You would find them perhaps
in a world you are not allowed to know an/thing of ; a world of
narrow means but of wide thoughts and high ideals. In our world
— I may say ours, for if you are one of its great ladies I am one of
its pets and playthings, and so may claim a place in it — there is
V6ry little thought, and there is certainly no kind of ideal beyond
winning the Grand Prix for one sex, and being better dressed than
everybody, for the other. It is scarcely possible that you should
find much sympathy in it; and without sympathy there is no
friendship. There are noble people in it still here and there, it is
true, but the pity of modern life in society is that all its habits, its
excitements, and its high pressure, make as effectual a ‘disguise
morally as our domino in Carnival ball does physically. Every-
body looks just like everybody else. Perhaps, as under the domino,
so under the appearance, there may be great nobility as great
deformity ; but all look alike. Were Socrates -amongst us he
would only look like a club-bore, and were there Messalina she
would only lopk — well — ^look much like our Duchesse Jeanne.”

Yere glanced up at him quickly, then reddened slightly, and
rose from the bench.

“ What a baseness I am committing to speak ill of a woman
who gave me her smiles and her strawberries,” thought Correze.

Nevertheless, warned against Madame Jeanne she must be, even
if she tMnk me ever so treacherous to give the warning. Sh6
knows n^hing; it would be as well she should know nothing;
only, if sllfe be not on her guard, Jeanne will hurt her — ^some way.
The mistress of Zouroff will neyer forgive his wife, and Casse-une-
Croflte would pardon her more r^ily than would the wife of Duo

^ M0TE8.

Paul. .0 Grod ! what a world to throw her into I The white doo
of'Bylstone cast into a vivisector’s torture troughT”

And what could he say to her of it all ? ^ Nothing.

Midway in this dale of Weissbach there is a memorial cross,
with a rude painting; the trees are majestic and gigantic there;
there is a wooden bench ; and a little way down, under the trees,
there is the river broken up by rocks and stones into eddies ami
freshets of white foam.

“,llest here. Princess,” said Oorreze. " You have walked several
miles by this, and that stick parasol of yoursis no alpenstock to help
you much. Look at those hills through the trees ; one sees here,
if nowhere else, what the poets' ‘ blue air ’ means. Soon the sun
will set, and the sapphire blue will be cold grey. But rest a few
moments, and I will gather you some of that yellow gentian. You
keep your old love of flowers, I am sure ? ”

Vere smiled a little sadly.

“ Indeed, yes ; but it is with flowers as with everything else, I
think, in the world ; one cannot enjoy them for the profusion and
the waste of them everywhere. When one thinks of the millions
that die at one ball ! — and no one hardly looks at them. The most
you hear any one say is, * the rooms look very well to-night.' And
the flowers die for that.”

“ That comes of the pretentious prodigality we call civilisation,”
said Oorreze. M6re i)rosaicaUy it is just the same with food ; at
every grand dinner enough food is wasted to feed a whole street,
and the number of dishes is so exaggerated that half of them go
away untasted, and even the other half is too much for any mortal
appetite. I do not know why we do it ; no one enjoys ; Lazarus
out of the alleys might, perhaps, by way of change, but then he is
never invited.”

“ Everything in our life is so exaggerated,” said Vere, with a
sigh of fatigue, as she recalled the endless weariness of the state
banquets, the court halls, the perpetual succession of entertainments,
which in her world represented pleasure. “ There is nothing but
exaggeration everywhere ; to mo it always seems vulgarity. Our
dress is overloaded like our dinners ; our days are over-fi.lled like
our houses. Who is to blame ? The leaders of society, I suppose.”

Leaders like Madame Joanne,” said Oorreze quickly.

She smiled a little.

You are very angry with her ! ”

‘'Princess — frankly, I do not think she is a fit companion for
you.**

“My husband thinks that she is so.”

“ Then there is no more to be said, no doubt,’* said Cqrreze with
his teeth shut, “ For me to correct the judgment of fM., Zouroff
would be too great presumption.**

“ You may be quite right,” said Vere, “ But you see it is not for
mo tq question ; I have only to obey,”

MOTES. 245

Corrfeze choked aii oath into silence, and wandered a little way
towards the water to gather another foxglove.

Yere sat on the low bench under the crucifix on the great tree ;
she had taken off her hat ; she had the flowers in her lap ; her dress
was white ; »6he had no ornament of any sort ; she looked very
like the child who had sat with him by the sweetbriar hedge on
Calvados. Taller, lovelier, with a different expression on her grave,
proud face, and all the questioning eagerness gone for ever from her
eyes ; yet, for the moment, very li& — so like, that, but for the
gleam of the diamond circlet that was her marriage ring, ho would
have forgotten.

He came and leaned against one of the great trees, and watched
the shadows of the leaves flutter on her white skirts. He realised
that he loved her more than he had ever loved anything on earth —
and she was the wife of Sergius Zouroff.. She was no more Vere^
but the Princess Vera, and her world thought her so cold that it had
called her the edelweiss.

He forced himself to speak of idle things.

“ After all,” he said aloud, ** when all is said and done, I do be-
lieve the artistic life to be the happiest the earth holds. To be sure,
there is a general feeling still that we do not deserve Christian
burial, but that need not much trouble a living man. I think,
despite all the shad 9 ws that envy and obtusenoss, and the male-
volence of the unsuccessful rival, and the absurdities of the incapable
critic, cast upon its path, the artistic life is the finest, the truest, the
most Greek, and so the really happiest. Artists see, and hear, and
feel more than other people ; when they are artists really, and not
mere manuflxcturers, as too many are or become. My own art has a
little too much smell of the footlights ; I have too few hours alone
with Beethoven and Mozart, and too many with the gaslit crowds
before me. Yet it has many beautiful things in it ; it is always
picturesque, never mediocre. Think of my life beside a banker^s
in his parlour, beside a lawyer’s in the courts, they are like spiders
shut up in their own dust. I am like a swallow, who always sees
the sun because he goes where it is summer.”

“ It is always summer with you.” There was ft tinge of regret
and of wistfulness in her voice of which she was not conscious,

“ It will be winter henceforward,” he thought as he answered :

Ym ikhas been so. I have been singularly fortunate — ^perhaps as
much !n theHemperament I was born with as in other things ; for,
if, JVC. 08cipkpe any very gi^eat calamity, it is our own nature that
m*ik^§ i^ eun^ner or makes it winter with us.”

“ But If ‘you were in Siberia,” said Vere with a faint smile ;
** could y^Mj make it summer there ? ”

“ I wojild try,” said Correze. “ I suppose Nature would look
grand there sometimes, and there would be one’s fellow-creatures.
But then, you know, it has been my good fortune always to be in
the sun ; I am no judge of darkness, I dread it. Sometimes I

246

MOTm.

wake in tke nigkt and think if I lost my voice all suddenly, as I
may any day, how should I bear it? — ^to be livinof and only a
memory to the public, as if I were dead — scarcely a memory even ;
there is no written record of song, and its mere echo soon goes off
the ear. How should I bear it — ^to be dumb ? to be dethroned ? I
am afraid I should bear it ill. After all, one may be a coward
mthout knowing it.”

** Do not speak of it ! ” said Vere quickly, with a sense of pain.
Mute ! That voice which she thought had all the melody that
l)oets dream of when they write of angels! It hurt her even to
imagine it.

It could not be worse than Siberia, and men live through that,”
said Corr^ze. Have you not seen. Princess, at a great ball, some
one disappear quickly and quietly, and heard a whisper run through
the dancers of ^ Tomsk,' and caught a look on some few faces that
told you a tarantass was going out into the darkness, over the snow,
full gallop, with a political prisoner between his guards ? Ah ! it
is horrible ! When one has seen it it makes one feel cold, even at
noon in midsummer, to remember it.”

“Kussia is always terrible,” said Vere, with a little shudder.
“ Nowhere on earth are there such ghastly contrasts ; you live in a
hothouse with your palms, and the poor are all round you in the
ice; everything is like that.”

“ And yet you are Eussian,” said Correze a little cruelly and
bitterly,’; for he had never forgiven her quick descent into her
mother’s toils, her quick acceptance of temptation. “ You are cer-
tainly Eussian. You are no longer Vere even; you are Princess
Vera."

“ I am always Vere,” she said in a low tone, “ They must call
me what they will, but it alters nothing.”

“ And Vera is a good name, too,” said Correze, bending his eyes
almost sternly on hers. It means Faith.”

Yes ; it means that.”

He glided into the grass at the foot 'of the tree, and sat there,
leaning on his elbow, and looking towards her ; it was the attitude
in which she had seen him first upon the beach at Trouville.

He was always graceful in all he did ; the soft- afternoon light
was upon his face ; he had thrown his broad felt hat upon the grass ;
a stray sunbeam wandered in the bright brown of Ms hair.

Vere glanced at him, and was about to speak ; then hesitated—
paused — at last unclosed her lips so long shut in silence.

** You remember that you bade me keep myself unspotted from
the world ? ” she said suddenly. “ I want to tell you, that I strive
always to do so— yes, I do. I was never ruled by ambition and
vanity— as you think. I cannot tell you more ; but, if vou under-
stand me at all, you will understand that that is true.” '

** I knew it without your telling me.”

Hi ceased to remember that ever ho had suspected her, or ever

MOTES.

m

reproached her. It was a mystery to him that this proud, strong,
pure nature should have ever been brought low by any force ; but
he accepted the fact of it as men in their faith accept miracles.

“ She was such a child ; who can tell what they did or said ? ”
ho mused, as an inhnite tenderness and compassion came over him.
This woman was not twenty yet, and she had tasted all the deepest
bitterness of life, and all its outrages of passion and of vice I

She was to him like one of the young saints of old, on whom
tyrants and torturers spent all the filth and fury of their will, yet
could not touch the soul or break the courage of the thing that
they dishonoured.

Women had not taught him reverence. He had found them
frail when he had not found them base, but, as great a reverence
as ever moved Gawaine or Sintram, moved him towards V^re now.
He feared to speak lest he should offend her ; it was hard to give
her sympathy, even to give her com];)rehen8ion, without seeming to
offer her insult. He knew that she was too loyal to the man whose
name she bore to bear to hear him blamed, with whatsoever justice
it might he.

lie was silent, while leaning on his arm, and looking down upon
the cups and sceptres of the green moss on which he rested. If he
looked up at her face he feared his strength of self-control would
fail him, and his lii)s be loosened.

Vere bound together his wild flowers one Tby one. She longed
for him to believe her guiltless of the low ambitions of the world ;
she could not bear that he should fancy the low temptations of the
world’s wealth and rank had ever had power over her.

Yet she was the wife of Sergius Zouroff. What could she hope
to make him think in face of that one fact ?

Suddenly ho looked up at her ; his brilliant eyes were dim with
tears, yet flashed darkly with a sombre indignation.

• “ I understand,” he said at last, his old habit of quick and elo-
quent speech returning to him. “ I think I have always understood
without words ; I think all the world does. And that is why one
half of it at least has no forgiveness for you — ^Princess.”

He added the title with a little effort ; it was as a curb on his
memory, on his impulse ; he set it as a baiTier between him and her.

''It is I who do not understand,” said Vere with a faiut smile,
and an accent of interrogation. She did not look away from the
wood-flowers. His eyes fed themselves on the lines of her delicate
and noble features ; he breathed quickly ; the colour came into his
face.

"Ho; you do not understand,” he said rapidly. "There is
your danger. There is your weakness. Do you know what it costs
to be an^nnocent woman in the world you live in? — the great world
as it caHs itself, God help us I To be chaste in mind and body,
thought and deed, to he innocent in soul and substance, not merely
with sufficient abstinence from evil not to endanger posiHon, not

MOTHS.

248

merely*" witli physical coldness that can deny the passions it i»
4iveried to influence, but real chastity, real innocence, which recoils
from the shadow of sin, and shrinks from the laughter of lust. Do
you know what the cost of such are ? I will tell you. Their cost
is isolation — the sneer they are branded with is ‘ out of fashion * —
no one will say it, perhaps, but all will make you feel it. If you be
ashamed to go half clothed ; if you be unwilling to laugh at innu-
endoes ; if you be unable to understand an indecency in a song, or
a gag at a theatre ; if you do not find a charm in suggested filth ; if
you do not care to have loose women for your friends, however high
may be their rank ; if adultery look to you all the worse because it
is a domestic pet and plaything ; and if immorality seem to you
but the more shameful because it is romped with at the children’s
hour, danced with at the Queen’s call, made a guest at the house-
parties, and smuggled smilingly through the custom-officers of
society — if you be so behind your time as this, you insult your
generation ; you are a reproach to it, and an ennui. The union of
society is a Camorra or Mafia. Those who are not of it must at
least subscribe to it, and smile on it, or they are lost. There is
your danger, my Princess of Faith, llow can they forgive you, any
one of them, the women who have not your loveliness and your
mind, and to whom you are a perpetual, an unconscious, an inex-
orable rebuke ? Clothed with innocence is metaphor and fact with
you, and do you understand the women of your world so little yet
as not to understand that they would pardon you the nakedness of
vice much sooner than they ever will those stainless robes which
you share with the children and the angels ? ”

He ceased; eloquence when he was moved was habitual as
song had been to him in his childhood when he had gathered his
sheep and goats on the green alp. He paused abruptly, because,
had he spoken more, he would have uttered words that could never
have been recalled, words that would have been set for ever be-
tween them like a gulf of flame.

Vere had listened; her face had flushed a little, then had
grown paler than was even usual to her. She understood now well
enough— too well ; an intense sweetness and a vague shame came
to her with his words ; the one that he should read her soul so
clearly, the other that ho should know her path so dark, her fate
so hateful.

She gathered the wood-flowers together and rose.

“ I am far from the angels and you think too well of me,” she
said, with a tremor in her voice. ** I think the sun is setting ; it
grows late.”

Oorreze rose, with a sigh, to his feet, ’and raised her bat from
the ground. ^

“Yes, It will soon be dark; very dark to me. ^Princess,
will you think of what I said ? will you be on your guard with
your foes?'*

MOTHS.

2ia

" Who are th^y?” ^

All women, most men. In a word, a world that *is not fit •
for your footsteps.’*

Vere was silent, thinking.

‘*1 have more courage than insight,” she said, with a little
smile, at last ; “ and it is easier to me to endure than to influence.
I think I influence no one. It must be my fault. They say I
am wanting in sympathy.”

Nay, the notes around you are too coarse to strike an echo
from you— that is all. You have a perfect sympathy with all that
is noble, but they never give you that.”

** Let us move quickly, the sun is set,” she said, as she took her
hat from him, and walked on down the forest road.

Neither spoke. In a little time they had reached the sluices,
where the imprisoned timbers lay awaiting the weekly rush of tho
waters. There a little low carriage with some mountain ponies,
lent her by the Court, was awaiting her.

Keeping his wild blossoms of tho forest in one hand, she gave
him the other.

I shall see you to-morrow ? ” she] asked, with tho frank sim-
plicity and directness of her nature.

lie hesitated a moment, then answered: “To-night I go up
into tho Thorstein ice-fields; we may be away some days; but
when I come down from the mountains, yes ; certainly yes,
madame, I will have the honour of saluting you once more. And
I will bring you some edelweiss. It is the flower they call you
after in Paris.”

“ Do they ? I did not know it. Adieu.”

Her little postilion, a boy from the Imperial stables, with a
silver horn and a ribboned and tassellcd dress, cracked his whip,
and the ponies went away at a trot down towards the valley, whilst
beyond, tho last brightness of daylight was shining above the
grey-wJiitc sheet of the Carl Eisfeld that rose in view.

Correze stood on tho edge of the wilderness of timber, lying in
disorder in the dry bed of the river, awaiting the loosening of the
White Brook floods to float them to the Traun. Some birds began
singing in the wood; as the sun set behind the glacier.

“ They are singing in my heart too,” thought Corrfeze, “ but
I must not listen to them. Heine knew the caprice and the
tragedy of fate. He wrought no miracle to make the pine and tho
palm-tree meet.”

The days that followed dragged slowly over the head of Vere.

Ischl, in its nook between the hills, has always a certain sadness
about it, and to her it seemed grown grey and very dull. Tho
glaciers of Dachstein and Thorstein gleamed whitely afar off, and
her thoughts were with the hunters underneath those buttresses
of ice in the haunts of the steinbCck and the vultuie.

The perpetual clatter of the diichesse’s voluble tongue, and the

MOTES.

:250

chatter of society that was always about her-^yen here, in the
heart of the Salzkammergut — ^wearied her and irritated ^her more
than usual. She felt a painful longing for that soft deep voice of
Oorr^ze, which to her never spoke a commonplace or a compliment,
for the quick instinctive sympathy which he gave her without
alarming her loyalty or wounding her pride.

•‘You are very dull, Vera,” said the duchesse impatiently,
at length.

“ 1 am never very gay,” said Vere coldly. You kne^v that
when you offered to accompany me.”

“ Your husband wished us to be together,” said Madame Jeanne,
a little angrily.

“ You are very kind — to my husband — ^to so study his wishes,”
said Vere, with a certain challenge in her glance. But the duchesse
did not take up the challenge.

“ Correze has told her something,” she thought.

To quarrel with Vere was the last thing she wished to do. She
laughed carelessly, said something pleasant, and affected to he
charmed with Ischl.

I’hey went to the Imperial villa, rode a great deal, were courted
by the notabilities as hedited one of the loveliest and one of the
wittiest women of the time ; and the five days slipped away, as
the Traun water slid under its bridges and over its falls.

Vero began to listen wistfully for tidings of the return of the
Kaiser’s hunting party. One morning at breakfast she heard that
the Emperor had come hack at day&eak. But of Correzo tlicre
Avas nothing said.

Had it been any other memory than that of Correze she would
■have been disgusted and angered with herself at his occupation of
her thoughts ; hut he so long had been to her an ideal, an ab-
straction, an embodiment of all high and heroic things, a living
poem, that his absorption of her mind and memory had no alarm
for her. He was still an ideal figure; now, when he was lost
in the mists of the ice-fields of the Dachstein, as in winter when
before her in the creations of Beethoven, of Mozart, and of
Meyerbeer.

A little later that morning a jager brought to the Kaiserinn
hotel a grand golden eagle, shot so that it had died instantaneously,
und been picked up upon the snow in all its beauty of plumage,
without a feather ruffled. He brought also a large cluster of
■edelweiss from the summit of Thorstein, and a letter. The letter
was to Madame de Sonnaz from Curr^ze.

She was sitting opposite to Vere on the balcony that fronted
ihe bridge. .

“ From Der Freischiitz I ” she said with a laugh. “ He has not
«hot his own arm off, like Roger, that is evident.”

Vere did not raise her head from her lace-work.

It ^ad been written in the highest hut under the D^stein-

MOTHS.

251

«pitze, and was in pencil. After graceful opening compliments, in
which no one kneV better than himself how to make the common-
place triviality of formula seem spontaneous and fresh, he said—

“ I have shot a nobler creature than myself— men generally do
when they shoot at all. Emblematic of the Napoleonic cause to
which Madame la Duchesse has dedicated herself— inasmuch as it
Las lived on carrion, and though golden, it will be rotten in a
day, or at best stuffed with straw — I desire to lay it at the feet of
Madame Jeanne, where its murderer has ever long^, but never dared,
to prostrate himself, I offer the edelweiss to Madame la Princesse
Zouroff, as it is well known to he her emblem. It has no other
value than that of representing her by living at an altitude where
nothing but the snow and the star-rays presume to share its
iiolitude.”

He said, in conclusion, that his hunting trip having taten up
the five days which he had allotted himself for Ischl, he feared
he should see neither of them again until they met in Paris in
winter, as his engagements took him at once to the Hague, thence
to Dresden, where there were special performances in honour of one
of the gods of his old faith — Gliick.

** Very pretty,*^ reflected the Duchesse Jeanne as she read. ‘‘I
suppose he reached the edelweiss himself, or he could scarcely have
gathered it. I suppose Yera will understand that part of the
‘ emblem.^ ”

But though she thought so she did not say so; she was a
courageous woman, but not quite courageous enough for that. She
gave the edelweiss and the note together to her companion, and
only said, with a little smile, “ Corriize always writes such pretty
notes. It is an accomplishment that has its dangers. Uhero is
scarcely a good-looking woman in Paris who has not a bundle,
more or less big, of his letters ; all with that tell-tale suggestive
device of his — that silver Love, with one wing caught in a thorn-
bush of roses ; he drew it himself. You saw it on his flag at the
Kermessc. Oh, of course it is not on this pajjer. He scribbled
this in some <?hMet of the Dachstein. I will have my eagle stuffed,
and it shall have real rubies for eyes ; and I will put it in my
dining-room in Paris, and Corr^ze for his sins shall sit underneath it
and pledge the Violet and the Bee, Not that ho ever will, though ;
if he liave any political faith at all he is a Legitiimst — ^if he bo
not a Communist, But I don’t think he thinks about those things.
He told me once that nightingales do not build either iu new
stucco or in old timber — that they only wanted a bush of rose-
laurel. He is a mortel fantasque^ you know, and people have
spoiled him. He is very vain, and he thinks himself a Sultan.’^

All the while the duchesse was studying narrowly her com-
panion asi she spoke.

Vere, without any apparent attention to it, put her edelweiss
in an old gold hunting goblet, that she had bought that iroining

252 MOTm^

in one of the little dark shops of Ischl ; and the duchesse could
tell nothing from her face.

In her heart Vere fclt^a sense of irritation and disappointment.
The note seemed to her flippant, the homage of it insincere, and
his departure unnecessary and a slight. She did not know that he
wanted to turn aside from her the suspicion of a woman in whom
ho foresaw a perilous foe for her; and that to disarm worldly
perils he used worldly weapons. Vere no more understood that
than one of Chaucer’s heroines, with straight glaive and simplo
shield, would have understood the tactics of a game of Kriegspiel.

And why did he go?

She was far from dreaming that he went to avoid her. The
song of Heine did not mean to her all that it meant to him. That
she had place in his memory, some hold on his interest, she
thought — ^but nothing more ; and even that she almost doubted
now ; how could ho write oT her to Jeanne de Sonnaz ?

A cold and cruel fear that she had deceived herself in trusting
him seized on her ; she heard of him always as capricious, as un-
stable, as vain ; who could tell, she thought ? Perhaps she had
only given him food for vanity and for laughter. Perhaps his
seriousness and his sympathy had been but a mere passing mood,
an emotion ; no more real than those he assumed so i)erfcctly upon
his stage.

The doubt hurt her cruelly ,* and did not stay long with her,
for her soul was too noble to harbour distrust. Yet, at her car
Jeanne de Sonnaz perpetually dropped slight words, little stories,
shrewd hints, that all made him the centre of adventures as varied
and as little noble as those of any hero of amorous comedy. Ever
and again a chill sickening doubt touched her — that she, at once
the proudest and then the humblest woman in the world, had been
the amusement of an hour to a brilliant but shallow persijleiir.

She carried the gold goblet with the edelweiss of the Thorstein
into her own chamber, and, when quite alone, she burst into tears.

She never shed tears now. It had seemed to her as if they
were scorched up by the arid desolation of her life. They did her
good like dew in drought. So much she owed Corrdze.

Corrbze himself at that hour — ^having taken leave at daybreak
of the Imperial hunter and his courtly companions, who were
returning into Ischl — was walking by his guide’s side down the
face of the Dachstein towards the green Kauris range, meaning
to go across thence into the beautiful valley of Ens, and descend
•next day into the Maindliug Pass between Salzkammergiit
and Styria. He was still at a great elevation ; still amidst snow
and ice ; and the Kauris lay below him like a green billowy sea.
There was some edelwei;^ in his path, and he stooped and plucked
a little piece, and put it in his wallet.

“0 iceflower, you are not colder than my heart,” he said to
himself. “But it is best to eo: host for her. T will dedicate

MpmS. 263

myself to you, iceflower, and of the roses I will have no more ; no,
and no more of the ‘ lilies and languor.’ Edelweiss, you shall live
with me and be my amulet. You will \^ither and shrivel and bo
nothing, but you will remind me of my vow, and if others will
rage, let them. To the iceflowcr I will be true as far as a man in
his weakness can be. Will that denial bo love? In the old
chivalrous days they read it so. They kept their faith though they
never saw their lady’s face. The Duchess Jeanne would laugh—
and others too.”

And he went down over the rugged stony slope, with the snow
deep on cither side, and the green ice glistening at his feet, arid the
woods of the Kauris lifting thcmselv^cs up from the clouds and
the grey air below ; and thei*e on Daclistein, where never note of
nightingale was heard since the world was made, this nightingale,
that ladies loved and that roses entangled in their thorns, sang
wearily to himself the song of Heine~the song of the palm-tree
and the pine.

CHAPTEK XX.

The days went on, and the duchessc made thcha gay enough, being
one of those persons who cannot live without excitement, and
make it germinate wherever they are. Carried in her cham-dr>
^orteurSf playing chemin de far on her balcony, waltzing at the
little dances of the Imperial court, making excursions in the pine-
woods or down the lakes, she surrounded herself with officers and
courtiers, and created around her that atmosphere of diversion,
revelry, and intrigue, without which a woman of our world can no
more live than a mocking-bird without a globe of water. But, all
the while, she never relaxed in a vigilant observation of her com-
panion ; and the departure of Corr^ze baffled and annoyed her.

She had had a suspicion, and it had gone out in smoko. She
had spent much ingenuity in contriving to bring Vero to the
Salzkammergut, after having disbursed much in discovering the
projects for the summer sojourns of Correze; and, with his de-
parture, all her carefully built house of cards fell to pieces. She
did not understand it ; she was completely Ixjwildered, as he had
intended her to he, by the airy indifference of his message to her
companion, and his failure to return from the glaciers into the
valley. She regretted that she had troubled herself to be buried
for a month in this green tomb amongst the hills; but it was
impossible to change her imprisonment now. They had begun the
routine of the waters, and she had to solace herself as best she
might with the Imperial courtesies, and with sending little notes to
her friends, the sparkle of which was like the brightness of acid

254

MOTES.

drink, and contrasted strongly with the few grave^constrained Hne^
that were penned by Vere.

One day, when they had but little more time to spend on the
yraun, banks, she got together a riding and driving ]:)arty to Old
Aussee.*' • < ^

Aussee is quaint, and ancient, and charming, where it stands on
its three-branched river ; its people are old-fashioned and simple ;
its encircling mountains and its dark waters are full of peace and
‘sdlteinnity. "When the gay world breaks in on these quiet old
towns, and deep lakes, and snow-girt hills, there seems a profanity
in the invasion. It is only for a very little while. At the first
breflth of 'autumn the butterflies flee, and the fishermen and salt-
workers, and tinibor-hcwers and chamois-hunters, are left alone with
their Ayaters and their hills.

The duchesse’s driving p<arty was very picturesque, very show}%
very nois}’ — “ good society ” is always very noisy nowadays, and '
has forgotten that a loud laugh used to be “ had form." They wore
all j)euple of very high degree, but they all smoked, they all chat-
tered shrilly, and they all looked very much as if they had been
cut out of the Vie Parisienney and put in motion. Old Aussee, with
its legends, its homely Styrian townsfolk, and its grand circle of
snowclad summits, was nothing to them — they liked the Opern-
ririg, the Bois, or Pal 1-Mall.

Vere got away from them, and went by herself to visit the
Spitalkircho. The altar is pure old German work of the fourteenth
century, and she had heard of it from Kaulbach. In these old
Austrian towns the churches are always very reverent places ; dark
and tranquil ; overladen indeed with ornament and images, but too
full of shadow for these to much offend; there is the scent of
centuries of incense ; the ivories are yellow with the damp of ages.
Mountain suzerains gnd bold ritters, whose deeds are still sung of
in twilight to the zither, sleep beneath the moss-grown pa»vement
their shields and crowns are worn flat to the stone they were
embossed on by the passing feet of generations of worshippers.
High above in the darkness there is always some colossal carved or
moulded Christ. Through the half-opened iron- studded door there
is always the smell of pinewoods, the gleam of water, the greenness
of Alpine grass; often, too, there is the silvery falling of rain,
and the fresh smell of it comes through the church, by ivhose black
benches and dim lamps there will be sure to bo some old bent
woman pmying.

The little church was more congenial to Yere than the com-
panionship of her friends, who were boating on the Traun, while
their servants unpacked their luncheon and their wines. She
managed to elude them, and began to. sketch the wings of the
altar. She sebt her servant to wait outside. The place was dreary
^and dark; the pure Alpine air blew in from an open pane in
a Btamed window, there was the tinkle of a cow-bell, and the

MOTES.

25&

sound of running water from without ; a dog came and looked
at her. *

The altar was not an easy one to copy ; the calidles were not
lighted before it, and the daylight, grey and subdued without, as it
is so often hero, was very faint within.

“ After all, what is the use of my copying it ? ” she thought,
with a certain bitterness. “My husband would tell mo, if I cared
for such an old thing, to send some painter from Munich to do it
for me ; and perhaps he would be right.' It is the only mission we
have, to spend money.” . . • .

It is a mission that most women think the highest and most
blest on earth, but it did not satisfy Vero. She seemed to herself
so useless, so stupidly, vapidly, frivolously useless ; and her nature
was one to want work, and noble work.

She sat still, with her hands resting on her knees, add the
colour and oils lying on the stone floor beside her untouched. SJio
looked at the dark bent figure of the old peasant near, who had set
a little candle before a side altar, and was praying fervently. She
was a grey-headed, brown, wrinkled creature, dressed in the old
Styvian way ; she looked rapt and peaceful as she prayed.
Wiicu she rose Vere spoke to her, and the old 'woman answered
willingly. Yes, she was very old ; yes, she had always dwelt in
Aussee ; her husband had worked in the salt mines and been killed
in them ; her sons bad both died, one at Koniggratz, one in a
snowstorm upon Dachstein, that was all long ago ; she had some
grandchildren, tliey were in the mines and on the timber rafts ;
one had broken his leg going down the Danube with 'wood ; she
had gone to him, ho was only a boy ; she could not get him home
any other way, so she had rowed him back in a little flat boat,
rowxd and steered herself ; it was winter, the 1 raun flood was
strong, but they had come borne safe ; now he was well again, but
he had jseen the soldiers in Vienna, and a Soldier ho would be ;
there was no keeping him any more on the timber rafts. Vienna
was very fine ; yes, but herself she thought Aussee was finer ; she
had lighted that taper for her boy Ulrich ; he was going to the
army to-morrow ; she had begged the saints to 'watch* over him ;
the saints would let her see them all again one day. Had she
much to live on ? No ; the young men gave her what they could,
and she spun and knitted, and life was cheap at Aussee, and then
one could always pray, that was so much, and the saints did
answer, not always, of course, because there were so many people
speaking to them all at once, but yet often ; God was good.

Vere took her by the hand, the rough gnarled hand like a hit of
old oak bough, that had rowed the boat all the way from Vienna ;
and, having no money with her, slipped into it some gold porfe*
lonheurs off her wrist.

“ If I* stay I will come and see you. Tell me the way to find
your house.”

-250

MOTHS.

*‘I shall never see you again/* said the old woman with
swimming eyes. " One does not see Our Lady*twice face to face
till one gets up to heaven.** And she went away wondering,
feeling the gold circlets oh her arm, and telling her gossips, as they
knitted in the street, that she had seen either Our Lady or St,

, Elizabeth — one of the two it must sutely have been.

When she had gone, leaving her little taper, like a glow-worm,
behind her, Vere still sat on, forgetful of the gay people who were
carrying their coquetries, their jealousies, and their charms, on to
the Traun water. She had everything that in the world’s esteem
is worth having ; tho poor, looking at her, envied her, as one of
those who walk on velvet, and never feel tho stones. She had
youth, she had beauty, she had a great position ; yet, as she sat
there, she herself envied the life of the poor. It was real ; it was in
earnest ; it had the aflections to sustain and solace it. What a
noble figure that woman, rowing her sick boy down the river in tho
autumn rains, looked to her beside her own mother ! Unconsciously
she stretched out her arms into the vacant air; those slender
beautiful white arms, that Paris said were sculpturally faultless,
and that her husband liked to see bare to the shoulder at her balls,
with a circle of diamonds clasping them ; she felt they would have
force in them to row through the rains and against tne flood, if the
boat bore a freight that she loved.

But love was imfx>ssible for her.

At the outset of her life the world had given her all things
except that one.

They had shut her in a golden cage ; what matter if the bird
starved within? It would be the bird’s ingratitude to fate.

Even if her offspring lived — she shuddered as she thought of it
— they would be his, they would have his passions and his cruel-
ties ; they would be taken away from her, reared in creeds and in
ways alien to her; they would be Zouroff Princes whose baby
tyrannies would find a hundred sycophants, not W little simple
children to lead in her own hand up to God.

As she sat there the sound of the organ arose, and rolled softly
through the church. It was a time-worn instrument, and of littlo
volume and power, but tho rise and fall of tjkie notes sounded
solemn and beautiful in this old mountain church. The player
was playing tho Eequiem of Mozart.

When ttio last chords thrilled away into*^silenee, of that triumph
of a mortal over the summons of death, a voice rose alone and sang
the Minuit Chretien of Adam.

She started and looked round into the gloom of the grey church.
She saw.no one ; but the voice was that of Corr^ze,

Then she sat motionleiw, following the beauty of the EfoSl as it
rose highlit higher, as though angels were bearing tho singer of
nt away fedto earth, as the angels of Orcagna bear on their wings
the dk^bodlcd souls.

MOTHS.

257

For a while the cluirch was filled with the glory of rejoicing,
with the rapture «f the earth made the cradle of God — then all at
once there was silence. His voice had not sccincd to cease, but
rather to float farther and further above until it reached the clouds,
and grew still from the fulness of an uni magi liable joy, of an un-
utterable desire fulfilled. One dr two niicor chords of the organ,
faint as sighs, followed, then they too were still.

Verc sat motionless.

Surprise, wonder, curiosity, were far away from her ; all minor
emotions w’ere lost in that infniit<; sense of consolation and of im-
mortality ; oven of liim who sang she ceased for the moment to have
any memory.

Aft(H' a little while a lad came to her over the grey stones; ji
lad of Aussee, flaxeu-haired and bliic-eycd, in the white shirt that
served him as a chorister.

He brought her a great bouquet of Alpine roscjs, and in the midst
<if the roses was tlie rare dark -blue Woifmla (Javinihiana which
gntws upon Ihe slopes of the Gartiiorkbgcl, and uowlierc else in all
t!ie w<n'ld, they say.

“The foreigner for whom I blew the organ-bellows bade me
biliig you this,” said the boy. “ JIc sends you his honjage,’*

“ Is he ill the cluirch ?”

‘'Yes; he says — may he see you one moment?”

“Yes.”

Verc took the Aljunc bouquet in licr hands. She was still in a
sort of trance.

The Noel was still upon li(‘r ears.

Slu? did not even wonder how or why he came there. Since she
kad heard the song of Heine, it seemed to her so natural to hear his
\ oioe.

SI 1 C took her great bomiuet in her hands and went slowly through
'i!ic twilight of the cluirch and towards the open doors. She was
: iiinking of the little dog-rose gathered ou the cliils hy the sea in
•^.'alvados.

Jn another moment Correzo stood before her in the dusk. A
‘ tra)^ sunbeam wandering through the dusty iiaiies-of the window
tv 11 on his bright uncovered head.

“ 1 thought you iverc far away,” slic said, with effort — her heart
was beating. “ I thought you were at the Hague ?”

He made a little gesture with his hand.

“ I shall ho there. But could you think I would leave Austria
> abruptly when you were in it ? Surely not I ”

Slie was silent.

In his presence, with the sweetness of his voice on her car, all
her old pu^‘e and perfect faith in him was strong as in the childish
liour wlien she had heard him call tlie lark his little hrotlier.

“ You wrote to Madame do Soniiaz ”

“I wrote to Madame de Sonnaz many things tliat 1 knew she

258

MOTES.

would not believe/’ he rejoined quickly. " Oh, my Princess of
Faith! one must fight the spirits of this werld with worldly
weapons, or he worsted. Yon arc too true for that. Alas ! how
will the battle go with you in the end 1 ”

Ho sighed impatiently. Ycro was silent.

She but partly understood him.

“ Have you been amongst the glaciers all this time ? ” she asked,
at length.

*‘Ko. I went to the Gitschthal in Carinthia. Do you know
tliat yonder blue flower only grows there on the side of the Gartner-
ktigel, and nowhere else in all the breadth of Europe ? I thought it
was a fitter emblem for you than the edelweiss, which is bought
and sold in every Alpine village. So I thought I would go and
fetch it and bring it to you. The Gitschthal is very charming ; it
is qutte lonely, and untrodden except by its own mountaineers.
Yon would care for it. It-made mo a boy again.”

“ You went only for that? ”

“ Only for that. What can one give you ? You have everything.
Prince Zonroff bought you the Roc’s egg, hut I think lie would not
care to climb for the Wolfinia. It is only a mountain flower.”

Voro was silent.

It was only a mountain flower ; but, as he spoke of it, lie gave
it the meaning of the flower of Oberon.

Had she any right to hear him? The dusky shadows of tlio
church seemed to swim before her sight; tlie beauty of tlio Koc?
seemed still to echo on her ear.

“How could you tell that I was here? ” she murmured.

lie smiled.

“Tliat was very easy. I was in Ischl .at daybreak. I would
have sung a reveil under your window while the cast was red,
only Madame Jeanne would have taken it to herself. You go to
Russia ? ”

“In three days — yes.”

Correze was silent.

A slight shudder passed over him, as if the cold of Russia
touched him.

Suddenly he dropped on his knee before her.

“ I am but a singer of songs,” ho murmured. “ But I honour
you as greater and graver men cannot do jgerhaps. More than I do,
none can. They will sjpeak idly of me to you, I dare say, and evil
loo, pcrliaps ; but do not listen, do not believe. If you ever need a
servant — or an avenger— call me. If I bo living I will come.
Alas I alas I Not I, nor man, can save the ermine from tlu;
moths, the soul from the world; but you arc in God’s hands if God
there bo above us. Farewell.”

Then he kissed the hem of her skirts and left her.

She kept the mountain flow’ers in her hand, and kn6w bow her
doubt had wronged him.

MOTHS.

250

Ten minutes later slic left the church, hearing th.c voices of lior
friends. At the* entrance she was met by ^Madame do Honnaz,
wliosc high silver heels, «'ind tall ebony cane, and skirts of cardinal
red, were followed by an amazed group of Styrian childveu and
women with their distaffs.

“ Where have you been, my very dear ? ” asked Duchesse Jeanne.

We have missed you for hours. We have been on the river, and
Ave are very liungry. I am dying for a quail and a posch. What
is that dark blue flower; does that grow in the church?”

A grey-headed English ambassador. Lord Ilangor, who w’as in
the rear of tlio ducliesse, and was a keen and learned botanist, bent
his ej’c-glasses on the rare blue hlo.ssom.

“ Tlie Wollinia ! ” he cried in delighted wonder. “ The Wolfiriia
Curinthiana ; tliat is the very phoenix of all flowers ! Oh, Princess !
if it be not too intrusive, may one beg to know wherever yon got
that treasure ? Its only home is leagues away on the Gitsclithal.”

“ It came from the Gitschthal ; a boy brought it to me,”
answered Vcrc; yet, though the words were lit(3rally true, she felt
herself colour as she spoke them, because she did not say quite all
the truth.

IDuchesso Jeanne looked at her quickly, and thought to herself,
'^CorrozG sent her those wild flowers, or brought them to her. i
do not believe in La Ilayc.”

Vcrc, indifferent to Ihcin all, stood in thccliurch por(di,with tlie
soft grey light shed on li(!r, and the alpine roses in her liands, and
tlic spell of the Nold was still with her. “ Lift up my soul,” i)rays
the Psalmist — notliing will ever answer tliat pra.ycr as music does.

“ What a beautiful creature she is I ” said tlio old ambassador
incautiously to the Duchesse Jeanne, as he looked at her, with that
seft light from sunless skies upon her face.

The Duchesse Jeanne cordially assented. 'Mbit,” she added
with a smile., “people say so because she is faultlessly made, face
and form ; they say so, and there is an end. It is like sctilpture ;
])eopl(3 go mad about a bit of china, a length of lace, a little picture;
i)ut no one ever goes mad about marble. They praise — an<l pass.”

“Not always,” said the imprudent di])lomatist, forgetful of
diplpmacy. “1 think no one would pass hero if they saw the
slightest encouragement or permission to linger.”

“ But there is not the slightest. What 1 said — she is sculptural ”

“ How happy is Zouroff! ”

“Ah 1 Call no man happy till he is dead. Who knows if she
will be always marble?”

“ She will never be a woman of llic period,” said the old inasi
with some asperity. “I think her portrait will never be sold in
shops. So far she will for ever miss fame.”

“ It is amusing to sec oneself in shops,” said Madame de Sonnaz.
“ Now and then I see a little crowd before mine ; and the other day
I heard a boy say — a boy who had a tray full of on m head

2G0

MOTHS.

— ‘ Tiens ] Celle-ci ; cllc est jolimcnt laide, mais elle est cr^nc, la
petite ; v’li 1 ’ That was at my portrait ”

“ It is popularity, madame,” said the ambassador with a grave
bow. “ The boy with the pipes knew his period,’*

“And how much that is to know ! ” said the lady with vivacity.
“ It is better to be the boy with the pipes than Pygmalion, To
know your own times, and adapt yourself to them, is the secret of
success in everything from governing to advertising. Nowadays
a statesman has no chance unless he is sensational; a musician none
unless he is noisy; an artist none unless he is cither diseased or
gaudy; a government none unless it is feverish, startling, and ex-
travagant. It is the same with a woman. To be merely faultlessly
beautiful is nothing, or next to nothing ; you must know how to
display it, how to provoke Avith it, how to tint it here, and touch
it there, and make it, in a word, what my boy with the pipes
called me. I have not a good feature in my face, you know, and 1
have a skin like a yellow i)lum, that Piver can do nothing to redeem,
and yet ninety-nine of the whole world of men will look at that
perfect beauty of Princess Zouroff, praise her, and leave her to come
to rac. The boy with the pipes is a type of mankind, I assure you.
»Vill you tell me, pray, why it is ? ”

“ Excuse me,madamc,” said the old man, with another low bow.
“ To cx])lain the choice of Paris is always a most painful dilemma ;

tli(} goddesses are all so admirable "

“No i)hrascs. You are old enough to tell mo the truth ; or, if
you like, I will tell it to you.”

“ I should certainly prefer that.”

*<Well ”

“Well?”

“I will tell yon, then, in her own husband’s Avords : elle ne salt
•pas s^eticanailler”

And the duchesso, with a cigarette in her moutli, laughed, and
carried her cardinal red skirts, and her musical silver heels, over the
stones of Aaisscc to a raft on the river Avhich the skill of her attend-
ants had turned into a very pretty awning-shaded flower-decked
barge, Avhere their breakfast was spread in the soft grey air above
the green Avater.

Such Avomen as Duchesso Jeanne or Lady Dolly are never in
the country; they take Paris and London Avith them Avherever
they go.

fllie old dixdomatist sat silent through the gay and clamorous
breakfast, looking often at Vere, beside whose plate lay the alpine
roses, and in whose ruffled lace at her throat was the blue Wolfinia.

“ Good God ! Avhat an ago we live in 1 ” he thought. “ In which
a husband makes it a rei)roach to his wife that she does not under-
stand how to attract other men I I do believe that we have sunk
lower than the Romans of the empire ; they did draAV a line betAveeii
the wife and the concubine. We don’t draw any. Perhaps, after

MOTES. 261

all, the Nihilists ‘are right, and we deserve cutting down root and
branch in our corruption. The disease wants the knife.”

He muttered something of his thoughts to his next neighbour,
the young Prince Traoi.

The young man nodded, smiled, and answered, ‘'Duchesse
Jeanne is quite right. Princess Vera is as beautiful as a Titian ;
but one gets tired of looking at a Titian that one knows will never
come into the market. Or rather she is like a classic statue in one
of the old patrician museums in Kome. You know nothing will
ever get the statue into your collection ; you admire and pass. I'ho
other day, at the Hotel Drouot, there was a tobacco-pot in Karl
Theodor porcelain, that was disputed by half Europe, and went at
a fabulous price; the woman we like resembles that tobncco-pot;
it is exquisite, but it can be? got at, and anybody’s hand rfiny go
into it ; and even in its beauty — for Karl Theodor is so beautiful—
it is sugg(‘stive and redolent of a ctuirsc pleasure.”

“All that is very well,” said Lord Bangor ; “ but though it may
explain the modern version of Paris’s choice, it does not explain
why in marriage ”

“Yes, it does,” said the younger man. “^J’hc Roman noble
does not care a straw for the statues that ennoble his vestibule; if
lie saw them once being disputed in the Rue Drouot he would
quicken into an owner’s appreciation. Believe fne, the only modern
passion that is really alive is envy. How should any man care for
what is passively and undisputedly his ? I’o please us a woman
must be hung about with other men’s desires, as a squaw with
beads.”

“ Then you, too, would wish your wife to savoir s'encanailler'^ ”

“Not my own wife,” said the young man with a laugh. “ But
then I belong to an old school, though I am young: Austrians
all do.”

“ Whilst Russians,” said the old man savagel}^ “ Russians are
all Bussy Rabutins crossed with Timour Beg. By all, I mean of
course the five or seven thousand of ‘ personages ’ that arc all one
sees of any nation in society. The nation, I dare say, is well
enough, for it has faith, if its faith takes many odd shajics, and it
can bo very patient.”

The Duchesse Jeanne called aloud to him that he must not talk
politics at breakfast.

Then the breakfast came to an end, with many fruits and sweet-
meats and Vienna dainties left to bo scrambled for by the Aussee
water-habics ; and the driving party of Madame de Sonnaz began
their homeward way over the Potschen-Joch. The old ambassador
contrived to saunter to the carriages beside Vere.

“ If I were a score of years younger, madamc,” he said with a
glance at the dark blue flower at her throat, “ I would beg you to
juake me your knight and give me the Woljinia for my badge. It
is the only flower you ought to wear, for it is the only one really

262

MOTEB.

emblematic of you ; tbe edelweiss, that tliey call you after in Paris,
is too easily found — and too chilly. Have you liked the day ; has
it tired you very much ?

“ It takes a great deal to tire me physically,” said Vere. “ I am
stronger than they think.” ’

But mentally you tire soon, because the atmosphere you are
in floes not suit you ; is it not so ? ”

“I suppose so. I do not caro for the chatter of the salons
amidst the mountains.”

“ No—

Le vent qui vient k travera Ics montagnes
Me rendra fou —

is a fitter spirit in which to meet the glaciers face to face. I think
I)Coiile either have a love of .the mountains that is a religion, that is
unutterable, sacred, and intense; or else are quite indifferent to
them — like our friends. I know a man in whom they remain a
religion despite all the counter-influences of the very gayest of
worlds and most intoxicating of lives. I do not know whether you
ever mot him — I mean the singer CoiTte.”

“ Yes ; 1 know him.”

^ “ Ho is a very keen mountaineer ; he has a passion for the
heights, not that of the mere climber of so many thousand feet, but
rather of the dweller on the hills, whom nature has made a poet
too. 1 saw him first when ho was a little lad in the hills above
Sion. You know people always say that part of his story is not
true, but it is quite true. I am not aware why people who have
not genius invariably think that people of genius lie; but they
do so. I suppose Mediocrity cannot comprehend Imagination fail-
ing to avail itself of its resources ! Three and twenty years ago,
Princesse, I was already an old man, hut more active than I am
now. After a long and arduous season at my post I was allowing
myself the luxury of an incognito tour, leaving my secretaries and
servants at Geneva. No one enjoys the privacy and case of such
holidays like an old harness-worn public servant, and there is no
harness heavier than diplomacy, though they do give it bells and
feathers. One of those short — too short — summer days I had over-
walked myself amongst the green Alps of the Valais, and had to
rest at a considerable elevation, from which I was not very certain
how I should get down again. It was an exquisite day ; such days
as only the mountains can give one, with that exhilarating tonic in
‘the air that docs worried nerves more good than all the physicians.
Almost unconsciously I repeated aloud in the fulness of my heart,
with a boyishness that I ought perhaps to have been ashamed of,
but w^s not, the Thalysia ; you will know it, Princesse ; I have
heard that you are a student that would have charmed Eoger
Ascham. As I murmured it to myself I heard a voice take up the
Idyl, abd continue with the song of Lycidas : a pretty childish

MOTHS.

263

voice, tliat had liyighter in ifc, laughter no doubt at my surprise. I
turned and saw a little fellow with a herd of goats ; he was a
beautiful child about nine or ten years old. His Greek was quite
pure. I was very astonished, and questioned him. He told me ho
was called llaphael de Corr^ze. As it was near evening he offered
me to go down with him to his father’s hut, and I did so ; and, as
he trotted by my side, he told me that his father had taught him
all he knew. He kept goats, ho said, but he studied too. I way
belated, and should have fared ill but for the hospitality of that
mountain hut. I cannot tell you how greatly his father interested
me. He was a scholar, and had all the look and bearing of a man
of birth. lie told me briefly how his father had taken to the
mountains when the revolution ruined the nobility of Savoy. He
was then in feeble health ; he was anxious for the future of his boy,
who was all alive with genius, and mirth, and music, and sang to
me, after the simple supper, in the sweetest boyish pipe that it has
ever been my lot to hear. I left them my name, and begged them
to use mo as they chose ; but I never heard anything from them
after the bright morning walk, when the boy guided me down into
the high road for Sion. I sent him some books and a silver flute
from Geneva, but I never knew that he got them. My own busy
life began again, and I am shocked to say that I forgot that hut
in the Alj)s, though that tranquil homely interior was one of the
prettiest pictures which life has ever shown me. Many years after-
w^ards, in Berlin, one night after the opera, going on to the stage
with some of the princes to congratulate a new singer, who had
taken the world by storm, the singer looked hard at me for a moment
and then smiled. ‘1 have the silver flute still, Excellency/ he
said. ' I do hope you had the note I wrote you, to thank you for
it, to Geneva.’ And then, of course, in that brilliant young tenor
I knew my little goat-boy, who had quoted Theocritus, and
wondered how I could have been so stupid as not to have remem-
bered bis name when I heard it in the public mouth. So I, for
one, know that it is quite true that ho is a mountaineer no less
than he is an artist and a Marquis de Correze. They say he has
been in Iscbl ; I wish I had known it, for I am always so glad to
see him out of the whirl of cities, where both he and I, in our
different ways, are too pressed for time to have much leisure for
talk. He is a very charming companion, Correze. Forgive me,
Princesse, for telling you such a long story. Prosiness is pardoned
to age ; and here are the carriages.”

Vere had listened with changing colour, all the dejection and
indifference passing from her face, and a light of pleasure and sur-
prise shiping in her frank grave eyes.

" Do not apologise. You have interested me very much,” she
said simply.

And the astute old man noticed that, as she spoke, she uncon-
sciously touched the blue mountain flower at her throat.

MOTES.

Improbable as it seems,” he thought to himself, would
wager that it is Correze who gave her that Wolfinia, She is not as
cold as they say. ' Elle ne sail pas s'encanaillerJ No ; and she
will never learn that modern science. But there are greater perils
for great natures than the bath of mud, that they never will take
though it is the fashion. The bath of mud breaks nothing, and
inesdames come out of it when they like white as snow. But these
people fall from the stars, and break everything as they fall, in
them and under them. She is half marble still ; she is not quite
awake yet ; but when she is — when she is, I would not wish to be
Prince Sergius Zouroff ! ”

The party went homeward in the fresh mountain air, leaving
the evening lights on Old Aussee lying amidst its many waters.
Vere was very silent, her alpine roses lay in her lap, the Minuit
(JhrUien was on her ear. The sun had set when they descended
into Ischl. Her servants came to meet her, and said that her
luushand had arrived.

Quel preux chevalier de wan /’’cried the Duchessc Jeanne
with her shrill laughter, that was like the clash of steel.

“ Quel preux chevalier de mart** repeated the Duchessc do
Sonnaz to Prince ZourolT alone, as they stood on the balcony of the
hotel after dinner.

lie laughed as ho leaned over the balustrade smoking.

“ Je Vai toujours ete^ pour toi^^ ho whispered.

The Duchessc de Sonnaz gave him a blow with her pretty fan,
that Fantin had painted with some Loves playing blind-man’s-buff.

Vere was inside the room ; she was inteuf upon her lace- work.
The shaded light of a lamp fell on the proud, mournful calmness of
lier face. She wore black velvet with a high ruff of old Flemish
lace ; she looked like a picture by Chardin.

Prince Zouroff sauntered in from the balcony and approached
his wife.

“ Ycra,” he said suddenly to her, " they tell mo you are great
friends with that singing fellow Corrdze. Is it true ? ”

Vere looked up from her lace-work.

" Who say so ? ”

“Oh — people. Is it true?”

“ I have seen M. de Correze little, but I feel to know bim
well.”

She answered him the simple truth, as it seemed to be to her-
self.

“ Ah ! ” said Prince Zouroff, “ then write and tell him to come
to Svir, Wo must have some grand music for the Tsarewifeh, and
you can offer him five hundred more roubles a night than the
Petersburg opera gives him ; he can have his own suite of rooms,
and his own table ; I know those artists give themselves airs.”

Vere looked at him for a moment in astonishment, then felt
herself ^row cold and i)ale, with what emotion she scarcely knew.

MOTHS.

265

“ You had better let Anton write if you wish it,” she answered,
•iftcr a little pause. Anton was his secretary. But M. do Correze
would not come; he has many engagements; and I believe he
never goes to private houses unless he goes as a guest, and then, of
course, there is no question of money.”

Zouroff was looking at her closely through his half-closed eye-
lids. He laughed.

'' Nonsense. If an artist cannot he hired the world is coriiing to
an end. They have no right to ])rcjudiccs, those people; and, in
l)oint of fact, they only assume them to heighten the price. I
prefer you should write yourself ; you can give him any sum you
like ; but he sliall come to Svir.”

Verc hesitated a moment, then said very calmly, “It is not for
me to write ; Anton always does your business ; let him do riiis.”

The forehead of Zouroff grew clouded with a heavy frown ; she
had never contradicted or disobeyed him before.

“ I order you to write, madame,” he said sternly. *• Tlierc is an
end.”

Verc rose, curtsied, and passed before him to a writing-table.
There slie wrote —

“ Monsieur, — My husband desires me to beg you to do us the
honour of visiting us at Svir on the fifteenth of next month, when
the Tsarewitch will have the condescension to be w’ith us ; I
believe, however, that you will bo unable to do us tins gratification,
as I think your time is already too fully occupied. All arrange-
ments you may wish to make in the event of your acceding to his
desire you will kindly communicate to M. Zourolf. 1 beg to assure
you of my distinguislied consideration.

“ Vera, Princess Zouroff.”

She wrote rapidly, addressed the letter, and handed it to her
liushand.

“ Pooh ! ” he said, as he tcad it, and tore it up. “ You write to
tlie fellow as if he were a prince himself. You must not write to a
singer in that fashion. Say we will pay him anything ho choose,
i t is a question argent ; there is no need for compliments and
consideration.”

“You will jjardon me, monsieur, I will not write with less
courtesy than that.”

“ You will write as I choose to dictate.”

“ No.” She spoke very quietly, and took up her lacc-work.

“ You venture to disobey me ? ”

“ I will not disobey any absolute command of yours, but I will
not insult a great artist because you wish me to do so.”

There was a look of resolve and of contempt on her face that
was new to him. She had always obeyed his caprices with a passive,
mute patience that had made him believe her incapable of having
will or judgment of her own. It was as strange to him as if a

206

MOTES.

statue had spoken, or a flower had frowned. He^ stared at her in
surprise that was greater than his annoyance.

Fardieu I what has come to you ? ” he said fiercely. Taho
up your pen and write what I have spoken.'*

Napoleon, tu t'oulliesl** quoted the Duchesse Jeanne, as she
came to the rescue with a laugh. My dear Prince, pardon me, but
your charming wife is altogether in the right. Correze is a great
artist ; emperors kneel before him ; it will never do to send for him
as if he were an organ-grinder — that is, at least, if you want him to
••ome. Besides, Vera and he are old friends ; they cannot be ex-
pected to deal with one another like entrepreneur and employe, in
the sledge-hammer style of persuasion, which seems to be your
idea of beguiling stars to shine for you. Believe me, your wife is
right. Correze will never come to Svir at all unless ”

“ Unless what ? ”

“ Unless as her friend, and yours/*

There was a little accent on the first pronoun that cast the
meaning of many words into those few monosyllables.

Zouroff watched his wife from under his heavy eyelids.

Vere sat still, and composed, taking up the various threads of
her lace-pillows. She had said what she had thought courage and
courtesy required her to say ; to the effect of what she had said
she was indifferent, ,and she did not perceive the meaning in the
duchess's words — a pure conscience is often a cause of blindness
and deafness that are perilous.

“ When I have spoken ** began her husband, for he had the

childishness of the true tyrant in him.

Madame de Sonnaz puffed some cigarette-smoko into his face.

“ Oh, Cassar ; when you have spoken, what then ? You have
no serfs now, even in llussia. You can have none of us knouted.
You can only bow and yield to a woman’s will, like any other man.
Voyons ! I will write to Correze. I have known him ever since he
first set all Paris sighing as Edgardo, and I will insinuate to him
gently that he will find a bouquet on his table each day with a
million roubles about the stalks of it ; that will be delicate enough
perhaps to bring him. But do you really wish for him ? That is
what I doubt.”

“ Why should you doubt it ? ” said the prince, with his sombre
eyes still fastened on his wife.

Duchesse Jeanne looked at him and smiled ; the smile said a
great many things.

Because it will cost a great deal,** she said demurely, “ and 1
never knew that the Tsarewitch cared especially for music. Ho is
not Louis of Bavaria.”

Then she sat down and wrote a very pretty letter of invitation
and cajolery and command, all combined. Vere never spoke ; her
husband paced up and down the room, angry at having been worsted,
yet relftiotant to oppose his friend Jeanne.

MOTES.

267

It was the firsf disobedienco of Vero's since sbe had sworn him
obedience at the altar. It gave him a strange sensation, half of rage,
half of respect; but the mingling of respect only served to heighten
and strengthen the rage. He had been a youth when the emanci-
pation was given by Alexander to- his people ; and in his boyhood
he had seen his servants and his villagers flogged, beaten with rods,
driven out into the snow at midnight, turned adrift into the woods
to meet the wolves, treated anyhow, as whim or temper dictated on
the impulse of a moment’s wrath. The instinct of dominion remained
strong in him ; it always seemed to him that a blow was the right
answer to any restive creature, whether dog or horse, man or woman.
He had seen women scourged very often, and going in droves from
Poland to Siberia. He could have found it in his heart to throw his
wife on her knees and strike her now. Only he was a man pf the
world and knew what the w’’orld thought of such violence as that ;
and, in his own coarse way, he was a gentleman.

Correzo received the letter of Duchesse Jeanne one evening on
the low sands of Schevening, where some of the noblest ladies of
northern nobilities w^erc spoiling and praising him, as women had
done from the day of his debtlt. Correze felt that ho ought to have
been content ; he was seated luxuriously in one of the straw hive-
like chairs, a lovely Prussian Fiirstinn had lent him her huge fan, a
Dutchwoman, handsome as Eubens' wife, was nttaking him a cigar-
ette, and a Danish ambassadress was reading him a poem of Francois
Ooppee ; the sea was rolling in, in big billow's, and sending into the
air a delicious crisp freshness and buoyancy ; all along the flat and
yellow dunes were pleasant j^eople, clever people, handsome people,
distinguished people.

He ought to have been content. But he was not. He w’as think-
ing of green, cool, dusky, lir-scented Ischl.

The Danish beauty stopped suddenly in her reading. “You
arc not listening, Correze ! ” she cried aloud in some dismay and
discomfiture.

“ Madame,” said Correzo gallantly, “ Coppde is a charming poet,
but I would defy any one to think of what he writes when it is you
w'ho arc the reader of it ! ”

That is very pretty,” said the lovely Dane ; “ it would be perfect
indeed ; only one sees that you supiprcss a yawn as you say it ! ”

“I never yawned, or wished to yawn, in my life,” said he
jiromptly. “ 1 cannot understand people who do. Cut your throat,
blow out your brains, drown yourself, any one of these — that is a
conceivable impulse; but yawn! what a confession of internal
nothingness 1 What a vapid and vacant windbag must be the man
who collapses into a yawn 1 ”

“Nevertheless, you were very near one then,” said the Danish
beauty, casting her Coppee aside on the sand. “Compliments
aside, you are changed, do you know ? You are serious, you are
preoccupied.”

268

MOTHS.

At that moment his secretary brought him his letters. His
ladies gave him permission to glance at them, for some were marked
urgent. Amongst them was the letter of Madame do Sonnaz.

He read it with surprise and some anger. It was a temptation ;
and the writer had known very well that it was so.

He would not have touched the roubles of the master of Svir,
and would not willingly even have broken his bread, yet he would
have given everything he possessed to go, to be under the same roof
with the wife of Zourofif; to see, to hear, to charm, to influence her ;
to sing his songs for her ear alone.

The rough grey northern ocean came booming over the sands.
Correze sat silent and with a shadow on his face.

Then he rose, wrote a line in a leaf of his notebook, gave it tiv
liis secretary to have telegraphed at once to Ischl. The line said
merely —

“Mille remcrciments. Tr^s honore. Impossible d’acceptcr a
cause d’engagements. Tous mes hommages.”

The sea rolled in with a grand sound, like a chant on a great
organ.

** It is very "bourgeois to do right,” thought Correze ; “ but one
must do it sometimes. Madame Jeanne is too quick ; she plays her
cards coarsely. All those Second Empire women arc conspirators,
but they conspire too hurriedly to succeed. My beautiful edelweiss,
do they think I should pluck you from your heights ? Oh ! the
Goths ! Madame,” he said aloud, “ do be merciful, and read me the
harmonies of Coppdc again. You will not? That is revengeful.
Perhaps I did not attend enough to his charming verses. There is
another verse running in my head. Do you know it? I think
Sully Prudhommo wrote it. It is one of those things so true that
they hurt one ; and one carries the burden of them about like a sad
memory.

Dans les verres dpais du cabaret brutal,

Le vin bleu coule h Hots, et sans trevc a la ronde.

Dans le calice fin plus rarement abonde
Un vin dont la clarte soit digne du cristal.

Enfin, la coupe d’or du haut d’un pie^destal
Attend, vide toujours, bicn que large ct projfonde,

Un cru dont la noblesse h. la sienne rdponde :

On tremble d’en souiller I’ouvrage et le mo'tal.”

” Have your letters made you think of that poem ? ” asked his
com]>anion.

“ Yes.”

“ And where is the golden cup ? ”

At the banquet of a debauchee who prefers

‘ Les verres dpais du cabaret brutal.* ”

MOTHS.

269

CHAP'J’ER XXI.

A FEW weeks later tlioy were at Svir.

Svir was one of the grandest summer palaces of the many
palaces of the Princes Zouroff. It had been built by a French
architect in the time of the great Catherine’s love of French art,
and its appanages were less an estate than a province or princi-
pality that stretched far away to the horizon on every side save
one, where the Baltic spread its ice-plains in the winter, and its
l)lue waters to the briq^ summer sunshine. It was a very grand
place ; it had acres of palm-houses and glass-houses ; it had vast
stables full of horses ; it had a theatre, with a stage as large ks the
Folies-Marigny’s ; it had vast forests in which the bear and the
boar and the wolf were hunted wdth the splendour and the bar-
barity of the royal hunts that Snyders painted ; it was a Muscovite
Versailles, with hundreds of halls and chambers, and a staircase,
up which fifty men might have W'alked abreast ; it had many
treasures, too, of the arts, and precious marbles, Greek and Koman ;
yet there was no place on earth which Verc hated as she hated
Svir.

To her it was the symbol of desj[)otism, of brutal power, of
soulless magnificence ; and the cruelties of the sport that filled all
the days, and the oppression of the peasantry by the police-agents
which she was impotent to redress, weighed on her with continual
pain. She had been taught in her girlhood to think ; she knew
too much to accept the surface gloss of things as their truth ; she
could not be content with a life which was a perpetual pageantry,
without any other aim than that of killing time.

So much did the life at Svir displease her, and so indi%rent
was she to her own position in it, that she never observed that she
was less mistress of it than was the Duchesse de Sonnaz, who was
there with the Due de Paul, a jdacid sweet-tempered man, who was
devoted to entomology and other harmless sciences. It was not
Vere, but Madame Jeanne, who directed the amusements of each
day and night. It was Madame Jeanne who scolded the manager
of the operetta troup, who selected the pieces to be performed in
the theatre, who organised the hunting parties and the cotillons,
and the sailing, and the riding. It was Madame Jeanne who, with
her pistols in her belt, and her gold- tipped ivory hunting-horn,
and her green tunic and trowsers, and her general franc-tirmr
aspect, went out with Sergius Zouroff to see the bear’s death-
struggle, and give the last stroke in the wolfs throat.

Vere — to whom the moonlit curie in the great court w^as a
horrible sight, and who, though she had never blenched when the
wolves had bayed after the sledge, would have turned sick and

270

MOTHS.

blind at siglit of the d3dng beasts with the hunters' knives in
their necks — was only glad that there was any one who should
take the task oif her hands of amusing the large house-party and
the morose humours of her husband. The words of Corrbze had
failed to awaken any suspicion in her mind.

That the presence of Madame de Sonnaz at Svir was as great
an insult to her as that of Noisette in the Kermesse pavilion never
entered her thoughts. She only as yet knew very imperfectly lier
world.

“ It is well she is beautiful, for she is only a bit of still life,"
said Prince Zouroif very contemptuously to some one who compli-
mented him upon his wife’s loveliness.

When she received their Imperial gueets at the foot of her
staircase, with a great bouquet of lilies of the valley and orchids in
her hand, she was a perfect picture against the ebony and malachite
of the balustrade — that he granted ; but she might as well have
been made of marble for aught of interest or animation that she
showed.

'■ It angered him bitterly that the luxury and extravagance with
which she was surrounded did not impress her more. It was so
very difficult to hurt a woman who cared for so little ; her indificr-
ence seemed to remove her thousands of leagues away from him.

“ You see it is of no use to ho angry with hei-,” he said to his
confidante, Madame Jeanne. “ You do not move her. She remains
tranquil. She does not oppose you, but neither does she alter.
She is like the snow, that is so white and still and soft ; but the
snow is stronger than you ; it will not stop for you.”

Madamo Jeanne laughed a little.

“ My poor Sergius ! you would marry ! ”

Zourofif was silent ; his eyebrows were drawn together in moody
meditation.

Why had he married ? he wondered. Because a child's cold-
ness and a child’s rudeness had made her loveliness greater for a
moment in his sight than any other. Because, also, for Vcrc, base
as his passion had been, it had been more nearly redeemed by
tenderness than anything he had ever known.

“The snow is very still, it is true,” said. Madame Joanne
musingly ; “ hut it can rise in a very wild tourmmte sometimes.
You must have seen that a thousand times.”

“ And you mean ? ” said Zouroff, turning his eyes on her,

“I mean that I think our sweet Vera is just "the person to have
a coup de tete^ and to forget everything in it.”

** She will never forget what is due to me,” said ZourolT angrily
and roughly.

Madame de Sonnaz laughed.

“Do you fancy she cares about that? what she doc.s think of
is what is due to herself. I always told you she is the type of
woman that one never sees now — the woman who is chaste out

MOTHS.

271

of self-respect. It is admirable, it is exquisite ; but all the same it
is invulnerable ; because it is only a finer sort of egotism.”

“ She will never forget her duty,” said her husband peremp-
torily, as though closing the discussion.

“ Certainly not,” assented his friend ; “ not as long as it appears
duty to her. But her ideas of duty may change — who can say V
And, mon cher^ you do not very often remember yours to her ! ”

Zouroff blazed into a sullen passion, at which Madame do
Sonnaz laughed, as was her wont, and turned her back on him,
and lighted a cigar.

“ After all,” she said, ‘‘ what silly words we use ! Duty ! —
lionour ! — obligation ! ‘ Tout cela est si purement geoijraphique/ as

was said at Marly long ago. I read the other day of Albania, in
which it is duty to kill forty men for one, and of another country
in which it is duty for a widow to marry all her brothers-ih-law.
Lot us hope our Vera’s views of geograi)iiy will never change.”

They were standing together in one of the long alleys of the
forest, which was resounding with the baying of hounds and the
shouting of beaters. For all reply Sergius Zouroff put his rifle to
his shoulder ; a bear was being driven down the drive.

“ A moi I ” cried Madame Jeanne. The great brown mass came
thundering through the brushwood, and came into their sight ; she
raised her gun, and sent a bullet through its forehead, and snatched
ZourofTs breech-loader from him, and fired* again. The bear
dropped ; there was a quick convulsive movement of all its paws,
then it was still for ever.

“ I wish I could have married you ! ” cried Zouroff enthusiasti-
cally. “ There is not another woman in Europe who could have
done that at such a distance as we are ! ”

“ Mon vieux, we should have loathed one another,” said Madame
Jeanne, in no way touched by the compliment. " In a conjugal
capacity I much prefer my good Paul.”

Zouroff laughed — restored to good humour — and drew bis hunt-
ing-knife to give the customary stroke for surety to her victim.
The day was beautiful in the deep green gloom and balmy solitude
of the forest, which was chiefly of pines.

“Sport is very stupid,” said Madame Jeanne, blowing her ivory
horn to call the keepers. “Vera is employing her time much
better, I am sure ; she is reading metaphysics, or looking at her
orchids, or studying Nihilism.”

“ Let me forget for a moment that Vera exists,” said her
husband, with his steel in the bear’s throat.

Vere was studying Nihilism, or what has led to it, which comes
to the same thing.

The only town near Svir was one of no great importance, a few
miles inland, whose citizens were chiefly timber-traders, or owners
of trading ships, that went to and from the Baltic. It had some
churches, some schools, some war of sects, and it had of late been

272

MOTES.

in evil odour with the government for suspected socialistic doctrines.
It had been warned, punished, purified, but of late was supposed to
have sinned again ; and the hand of the Third Section had fallen
heavily upon it.

Verc this day rode over to it, to visit one of its hospitals ; her
mother, and other ladies, drove there to purchase sables and marten
skins.

Lady Dolly had been so near — ^at Carlsbad, a mere trifle of a
few hundred miles — tliat she had been unable to resist the tempta-
tion of running over for a peep at Bvir, which she was dying to sec,
so she averred. She was as pretty as ever. She had changed the
colour of her curls, but that prevents monotony of expression, and ,
if well done, is always admired. She had to be a little more careful
always to have her back to the light, and there was sometimes
aboutaher eye-lines which nothing would quite paint away ; and
her maid found her more pettish and peevish. That was all ;
twenty years hence, if Lady Dolly live, there will be hardly more
difference than that.

Her Sicilian had been also on the banks of the Teple — only for
his health, for he was not strong — but he had been too assiduous
in carrying her shawls, in ordering her dinners, in walking beside
her mule in the firwoods, and people began to talk; and Lady
Dolly did not choose to imperil all that tlie flowers for the Chil-
dren’s IIosi)itals, and the early services at Knightsbridge, had done
for her, so she hud summarily left the young man in the firwoods,
and come to Svir.

“ I always like to witness my dear child’s happiness, you know,
with my own eyes when I can; and in London and Paris both she
and I are so terribly busy,” she said to her friends at Carlsbad.

Herself, she always recoiled from meeting the grave eyes of
A^cre, and the smile of her son-iii-law was occasionally grim and dis-
agreeable, and made her shiver ; but yet she thought it well to go
to their houses, and she was really anxious to see the glories of
Svir,

When she arrived there, she was enraptured. She adored
novelty, and new things are hard to find for a person who has seen
as much as she had. The Russian life was, in a measure, diirorcnt
to what she had known elsewhere, the local colour enchanted her,
and the obeisances and humility of the i)cople she declared wore
quite scriptural

The giandeur, the vastness, the absolute dominion, the half-
barbaric magnificence that prevailed in this, the grandest summer
palace of the Zourofi’s, delighted her ; they appealed forcibly to her
imagination, which had its vulgar side. They appeased her con-
science, too ; for, after all, she thought, what could Vere wish for
more ? Short of royalty, no alliance could have given her more
wealth, more authority, and more rank.

These Baltic estates were a kingdom in themselves, and the

MOTHS.

273

prodigal, careless, endless luxury, that was the note of life there,
was mingled with* a despotism and a cynicism in all domestic rela-
tions that fascinated Lady Dolly.

" I should have been perfectly happy if I had married a great
llussian,” she often said to herself; and she thought that her
daughter was both thankless to her fate and to her. Lady Dolly
really began to bring herself to think so.

“ Very few women/* she mused, would ever have effaced them-
selves as I did ; very few would have put away every personal
feeling and objection as I did. Of course she doesn’t know — but 1
don’t believe any woman living would have done as I did, because
people are so selfish/*

She had persuaded herself in all this time that she had been
generous, self-sacrificing, even courageous, in marrying her daughter
as she did ; and when now and then a qualm passed over her, as
she thought that the world might give all these great qualities very
different and darker names. Lady Dolly took a little sherry or a
little chloral, according to the time of day, and very soon was her-
self again.

To be able to do no wrong at all in one’s own sight, is one of
the secrets of personal comfort in this life. Lady Dolly never
admitted, even to herself, that she did any. If anything looked a
little .wrong, it was only because she was the victim to unkindly
circumstance over which she had no control.

People had always been so jealous of her, and so nasty to her
about money.

“ It is all very well to talk about the saints,” she w’ould say to
herself, “but they never had any real trials. If the apostles had
had bills due that they couldn’t meet, or St. Helen and St. Ursula
had had their curls come off just as they were being taken in to
dinner, they might have talked. As it was, 1 am sure they enjoyed
all their martyrdom, just as people scream about being libelled in
‘Truth* or ‘ Figaro,’ and delight in having their names in them.”

Lady Dolly always thought herself an ill-used woman. If things
had been in the least just, she would have been born with thirty
thousand a year, and six inches more stature.

Meanwhile she was even prettier than ever. She had under-
gone a slight transformation ; her curls were of a richer ruddier hue,
her eyelashes were darker and thicker, her mouth was like a little
pomegranate bud. It was all Piver ; but it was the very perfection
of Piver. She had considered that the hues and style of the fashions
of the coming year, which were always disclosed to her very early
in secret conclave in the Rue de la Paix, required this slight deepen-
ing and heightening of her complexion.

“ I do wish you would induce Vera to rouge a little, just a little.
Dress this winter really will want it ; the colours will all bo dead
ones,” she had said this day at Syir to her son-in-law, who shrugged
his shoulders.

27i

MOTES.

“ I have told her she would look better ; but she is obstinate,
you hnow.*’

“ Oh-h-h I ” assented Lady Lolly. “ Obstinate is no word for
it; she is mulish ; of course, I understand that she is very proud of
licr skin, but it would look all the better if it were warmed up a
little; it is too white, too fair, if one can say such a thing, don’t you
know ? And, besides, even though she may look well now without
it, a woman who never rouges has a frightful middlc-agc before
her. Didn’t Talleyrand say so? "

^‘You are thinking of whist; but the meaning is the same.
Both are resources for autumn that it is better to take to in
summer,” said Madame N61aguine, with her little cynical smile.

“ Vera is very fantastic,” said the Duchesse Jeanne. “ Besides,
she is so handsome she is not afraid of growing older ; she thinks
she will defy Time.”

“ I believe you can if you are well enamelled,” said Lady Dolly
seriously.

** Vera will bo like the woman under the Merovingian kings,”
said Madame Nelaguine. ‘'The woman who went every dawn of
her life out into the forests at daybreak to hear the birds sing, and
so remained, by angels’ blessing, perpetually young.”

“ I suppose there was no society in France in that time,” said
liUdy Dolly ; “or cl^se the woman was out of it. In society every-
body has always painted. I think tlicy found all sorts of rouge -
])ots at Pompeii, which is so touching, and brings all tliose iioor
dear creatures so near to us ; and it just shows that human nature
was always exactly the same.”

“ The Etruscan focolare, I dare sny, were trays of cosmetics,”
suggested Madame N<51aguinc sympathetically.

‘‘Yes?” said Lady Doll}', whose history was vague. “It is s<»
interesting, I think, to feel that everybody was always just exactly
alike, and that when they complain of us it is such nonsense, ami
mere spite. Vera, why will you not rouge a little, a very little ? ”

“ I think it a disgusting practice,” said her daughter, who had
entered the room at that moment, dressed for riding.

“ Well, I think so too,” said Madame Ndlaguine with a little
laugh. “ I think so too, though I do it ; but my rouge is very
honest ; T am exactly like the wdbdcn dolls, with a rod dab on eacli
cheek, that they sell for the babies at fairs. Vera would be a sub-
lime wax doll, no doubt, if she rouged ; but, as it is, she is a marble
statue. Surely that is the finer work of art.”

“ I'he age of statues is past,” murmured the Duchess Jeanne.
“ We arc in the puppet and monkey epoch.”

“ It is all cant to bo against painting,” said Lady Dolly. “ Who
was it said tliat the spider is every hit. ns artificial ag the weaver ? ”

“Joseph le Maistre,” said Mackme Ndlaguine, “but be
means ”

“ IJe means, to be sure,’' said Lady Dolly with asperity, “ that

MOTHS.

275

unless one goes any clothes at all, like savages, one must

he artificial ; ahd one may just as well be becomingly so as frightfully
so ; only 1 know frights are always thought natural, as snubbing,
snapping creatures are thought so sweetly sincere. But it doesn’t
follow one hit ; the frights have most likely only gone to the wrong
people to get done up.”

** And the disagreeable snappers and snubbers and snarlers?”

“ Got out of bed the wrong end upwards,” said Lady Dolly, “ or
have forgotten to take their dinner-pills.”

“ I begin to think you are a ])hilosopher, Lady Dolly.”

“ I hope I am nothing so disagreeable,” said Lady Dolly. “ But
at least T have eyes, and my eyes tell me what a wretched, dull,

] awky-looking creature a woman that doesn’t do herself up looks
at a bali.” ,

“ Even nt twenty years old ? ”

Age lias nothing to do with it,” said Lady Dolly very angrily.

That is a man’s idea. People don’t paint because they’re old ;
th(‘y ]mint to vary themselves, to brighten tliornscdves, to dear
llieinselves. A natural skin may do very well in Arcadia, but it
won’t do where there are candles and gas. Besides, a natural skin’s
always the same ; but when you paint, you make it just what goes
best with the gown you have got on for the day ; and as women
grow older what are they to do ? It is all ver.y well to say ‘ bear
it,’ hut who helps you to hear it? Not society, which shelves
you ; not men, who won’t look at you ; not women, who count
your curls if they are false, and your grey hairs if they are real.
It is all very well to talk poetry, but who likes decheance ? It is
all very well to rail about artificiality and postichc, but who forced
us to bo artificial, and who made posliche a necessity? Society;
society ; society. Would it stand a woman who had lost all her
teeth and who had a bald head ? ’ Of course not. Then whose is
the fault if the woman goes to the dentist and the hair-dresser?
She is quite right to go. But it is absurd to say that society does
not make her go. All this cry about artificiality is cant, all cant.
Who are admired in a ball-room ? The handsome women who are
not young hut are dressed to perfection, painted to perfection,
coiffred to perfection, and are perfect hits of colour. If they come
out without their who would look at them? Mothers of

hoys and girls you say? Yes, of course they are ; but that is their
misfortune ; it is no reason wh^^ tlicy shouldn’t look as well as they
can look, and, besides, nowadays it is only married women that are
looked at, and children in short frocks, which is disgusting.

Lady Dolly paused for breath, having talked herself inro some
confusion of ideas, and went away to dress and drive.

She forgot the wrongs of fate as she drove to Molv with the old
ambassador Lord Bangor, who was staying there, and a charming
young Russian of the Guard, whoso golden head and fair beauty made
her Sicilian seem to her in memory yellow and black as ar olive i

-276 MOTHS.

lie liad really had nothing good but his eyes, she reflected as slie
drove.

When she reached Molv she admired everything ; the bearded
priests, the churches, the bells, the pink and yellow houses, the
Byzantine shrines. She was in a mood to praise. What was not
interesting was so droll, and what was not droll was so interesting.
If her companion of the Imperial Guard had not had a head like a
Circassian chief, and a form like Ilercules, she might perhaps have
found out that Molv was ugly and very flat, dirty and very un-
savoury, and so constituted that it became a pool of mud in winter,
and in summer a shoal of sand. But she did not see these things,
and she was charmed. She was still more charmed when she had
bought her sealskins and sables at a price higher than she would
have given in llcgent Street; and, coming out opposite the gilded
and painted frontage of the chief church, which was that of St.
Vladimir, she saw a sad sight.

Nothing less than a score of young men and a few women being
taken by a strong force of Cossacks to the fortress ; the townspeople
looking on, gathered in groups, quite silent, grieved but dumb, like
poor beaten dogs.

“ Dear me ! how veiy interesting I said Lady Dolly, and she
put up her eye-glasses. “ How very interesting ! some of them
(^uite nice-looking, too. What have they done ?

Tlie Bussian of the Guard explained to her that they were sus-
jiected of revolutionary conspiracies, had harboured suspected
persons, or were suspected themselves : Nihilists, in a word.

“ How very interesting I ” said Lady Dolly again. “ Now, one
woidd never see such a sight as that in England, Lord Bangor ? ”

“ No,” said Lord Bangor seriously ; “ 1 don’t think we should.
There are defects in our constitution ”

“ Poor things I ” said Lady Dolly, a pretty figure in feuillemortc
and violet, with a jewelled ebony cane as high as her shoulder,
surveyijig through her glass the chained, dusty, heartsick prisoners.

But why couldn’t they keep quiet ? So stupid of them I I never
understand those revolutionaries ; they upset everything, and bore
everybody, and think themselves martyrs ! It will bo such a pity
if you do get those horrid principles here. Kussiar is too charming
as it is ; everybody so obedient and nice as they are at present,
everybody kneeling and bowing, and doing what they’re told —
not like us with our horrid servants, who take themselves off the
very day of a big party, or say they won’t stay if they haven’t
pine-apples. I think the whole social system of Russia perfect —
quite perfect ; only it must have been nicer still before the Tsar was
too kind, and let loose all those serfs, who, I am quite sure, haven’t
an idea what to do with themselves, and will be sure to shoot him
for it some day,”

Lady Dolly paused in these discursive political utterances, and
looked* again at the little band of fettered youths and maidens.

MOTES.

277

dusty, pale, jadccl, who were being hustled along by the Cossacks
through the silent scattered groups of the people. A local official
had been wounded by a shot from a revolver, and they were all
implicated, or the police wished to suppose them to bo implicated,
in the offence. They were being carried away beyond the Ourals ;
their parents, and brothers and sisters, and lovers knew very well
that never more >vould their young feet tread the stones of their
native town. A silence like that of the grave — which would perhaps
be the silence of the grave — ^would soon engulf and close over them.
Henceforth they would be mere memories to those who loved them :
no more.

“ They look very harmless,” said Lady Dolly, di8api)ointed tha t
conspirators did not look a little as they do on the stage. “ Itealiy,
you know, if it wasn’t for these handcuffs, one might take tliem for
a set of excursionists; really now, mightn’t wo ? Just that sort of
jaded, dusty, uncomfortable look

“ Conscfiuent on * three shillings to Margate and back.' Yes ;
they have a Lank holiday look,” said Lord Bangor. “ But it will
be a long Bank holiday for them ; they are ou their first stage to
Siberia.”

** How interesting ! ” said Lady Dolly.

At that moment an old whitc-hair('d woman, with a piercing
cry, broke through the ranks, and fell on the neck of a young man,
clinging to him for all that the police could do, till the lances of tl.e
Cossacks parted the mother and son.

“ It is a sad state of things for any country,” said Lord Bangor ;
and the young captain of the Guard laughed.

'‘Well, why couldn’t they keep quiet?” said Lady Dolly.
“ Dear me ! with all this crowd, however shall we find the carriage ?
Where is Vere, I wonder ? But she said we need not wait for her..
Don’t you think we had better go home ? I shouldn’t like to meet
wolves.”

“ Wolves are not hungry in summer,’’ said Loi’d Bangor. “ It is
only the ])rison’s maw that is never full.”

“Well, what are they to do if people won’t keep quiet? ” said
Lady Dolly. “ I’m sure those young men and wohicn do not look
like geniuses that would be able to set the world on fire. I suppose
tlicy are work-people, most of them. They will do very well, 1
dare say, in Tomsk, Count Rostrow, here, tells mo the exiles are
beautifully treated, and quite happy ; and all that is said about the
quicksilver mines is all exaggeration ; newspaper nonsense.”

“ No doubt,” said Lord Bangor. “ To object to exile is a mere
bad form of Chauvinism.”

“ Why couldn’t they keep quiet if they don’t like to go there ? ”
she said’ again ; and got into the carriage, and drove away out into
the road, over’ the plain, between the great green sea of billowy
grasses, and the golden ocean of ripened grain ; and, in time, bowled
through the gilded gates of Svir ; and ate her dinner with® a good

278

MOTES.

appetite; and laughed till she cried at the drolleries of a new
operetta of Meta's, which the French actors gave in the little opera-
house.

** Life is so full of contrasts in Russia ; it is quite delightful ;
one c.an’t be dull,” she said to Lord Bangor, who sat beside her.

** Life is full of contrasts everywhere, my dear lady,” said he.
** Only, as a rule, we never look on the other side of the wall. It
bores us even to remember that there is another side.”

Vere that night was paler and stiller even than it was her ^vont
to be. She went about amongst her guests with that grace and
courtesy which never changed, but she was absent in mind ; and
once or twice, as the laughter of the audience rippled in echo to the
gay melodies of Meta, a shiver as of cold went over her.

“She must have heard something about Correze that has em-
barrassed her,” thought Madame de Sonnaz, but she was wrong.

Vere had only seen the same sight that her mother had seen, in
the little town of Molv.

That night, when the house-party had broken up to go to their
apartments, and she had gained the comparative peace of her own
chamber, Vere, when her maids had passed a loose white gown over
her and unloosened her hair, sent them away, and went into the
little oratory that adjoined her dressing-room. She kneeled down,
and leaned her arms on the rail of the little altar, and her head on
lier arms ; but she could not pray. Life seemed to her too terrible ;
and who cared ? who cared ?

Riches had done their best to embellish the little sanctuary ; the
walls were inlaid with malachite and marbles; the crucilix w^as a
wonderful work in ivory and silver; thepne-c^/ew was embroidercMl
in silks and precious stones; there was a triptych of Luke von
(Iranach, and Oriental candelabra in gold. It was a retreat that
had been sacred to the dead Princess Mania, her husband's mother,
a ijious and melancholy woman.

Vere cared little for any of these things; but the place was
really to her a sanctuary, as no one ever disturbed her there ; even
Zouroff never had presumed to enter it ; and the painted casements,
when they were opened, showed her the green plain, and, beyond the
plain, the beautiful waters of the Baltic. Here she could bo tran-
quil now and then, and try to give her thoughts to her old friends
the Latin writers ; or read the verse of Oeorge Herbert or the ])roso
of Thomas h Kempis, and pray for fbreo to bear the life she led.

But to-night she could not pray.

She was one of those who are less strong for the woes of others
than for her own.

She leaned her face upon her arms, and only wondered —
wondered — ^wondered — why men were so cruel, and ^od so deaf.

It was nearly two in the morning; through the painted panes
the stars were shining ; beyond the plain there \ras the silver of the
dawn. €'

MOTHB.

279

Suddenly a heavy step trod on the marbles of the pavement.
For the first tinie since their marriage, her husband entered th(>
place of prayer. She turned, and half rose in astonishment, and
her heart grew sick ; she was not safe from him even here. He
marked the instinct of aversion, and hated her for it ; the time was
gone by when it allured and enchained him.

“ Excuse me for my entrance here,” he said with that courtesy
to which the presence of his wife always compelled him, clespifr.
himself. “I am exceedingly annoyed, compromised, disgusted.
You were in Molv to-day ? ”

“ Yes ; I rode there. I went to see your mother’s hospital.”

She had quite risen, and stood, with one hand on the altar rail,
looking at him.

“1 hear that you saw those prisoners ; that you spoke to, them ;
that you made a scene, a scandal; that you gave one of the women
your handkerchief ; that you promised them all kinds of impossible
lollies. Be so good as to tell me what happened.”

“Who spies upon me ?” said Vere, with the colour rising toliei'
face.

“Spies! No one. If you choose to exhibit yourself in a public
street, a hundred people may well sec you. What did happen?
Answer mo.”

“ This happened. I met the prisoners. I do not believe any
of them are guilty of the attem])t to assassinate General Marcolofi*.
They are all very young, several were girls ; one of the girls biokc
from the guards, and threw herself before me, sobbing and begging
iny help. Her arm was cut and bleeding, I suppose in fastening
the chains; I took ray handkerchief and bound it up; I promised
her to support her mother, who is old and infirm. I spoke to them
all and bade them try and bear their fate calmly. I wept with them,
that I confess ; but I was not alone — there were not many dry eyes
in Molv. I believe all these young people to be quite innocent. I
believe if the Emperor saw the things that are done in liis name,
lie would not sanction them. That is all I have to tell you. It
has haunted me all the evening. It is horrible that such tyrannies
should be ; and that we should dine, and laugh, a‘nd spend thou-
sands of roubles in a night, and live as if no living creatures were
being tortured near us. I cannot forget it ; and I will do wbat 1
can to serve them.”

She had never spoken at such a length to her husband in all
the three years of her married life ; but she felt strongly, and it.
seemed to her that her reticence would have been- cowardice. She
spoke quite tranquilly, but her voice had a depth in it that told
how keenly she had been moved.

Zourbff heard her with a scowl upon his brows ; then lie laughed
contemptuous^ and angrily.

“ You believe ! ” ho echoed. • “ What should yon know, and
why should you care ? Will you learn to leave those things,*? alone ?

280

MOTES.

A Princess Zonroff dismounting in the dust to bind up the wounds
of a Nihilist convict! 'What a touching spectacle ! But we will
have no more of these scenes, if you please ; they are very un-
becoming, and, more, they arc very compromising. The Emperor
knows me well, indeed, but enemies might carry such a tale to
him ; and he might see fit to suspect, to order me not to leave
Eussia, to imprison me on my estates. It is as likely as not that
your theatrical vagaries may get bruited about at Court. I neither
know nor care whether these creatures shot Marcoloff or abetted
shooting at him ; what I do care for is the dignity of my name.”

Vere, standing beside the great ivory crucifix, with the draperies
of plush and ermine falling about her, and her fair hair unbound
and hilling over her shoulders, turned her face more fully upon
him. There was a faint smile upon her lips.

“ The dignity of your name ! ” she said merely; and the accent
said the rest.

The calm contempt pierced his vanity and his self-love, and
made him wince and smart. The first sign she had given that the
unworthiness of his life was known to her had been when she had
ordered him to remove the pavilion of Noisette. He had always
set her aside as a beautiful, blonde, ignorant, religious creature, and
the shock was great to him to find in her a judge who censured
and scorned him,

“ The dignity of my name,” he repeated sullenly and witli
greater insistaiico. “We were great nobles with the Dolgarouki,
when the Jiurnanofis were nothing. I do not choose my name to
bc^ dragged in the dust because you arc headstrong enough, or
childish enough, to fancy some incendiaries and assassins arc
martyrs. Have politics, if you like, in Paris in your drawing-
room, hut leave them alone liere. They are dangerous here, and
worse than dangerous. They are low. I deny you nothing else.
You have money at your pleasure, amusement, jewels, anything
you like ; but 1 forbid you political vulgarities. I was disgusted
%vhen 1 heard ot the spectacle of this morning ; I was ashamed ”

“ Is it not rather a matter for shame that wo eat and drink, and
laugh and talk, with all this frightful agony around us ? ” said
Vere, with a vibration of rare passion in her voice. “ The people
may be wrong ; they may be guilty; but their class have so much
to avenge, and your class so much to expiate, that their offence
cannot equal yours. You think I cannot understand these things ?
You are mistaken. There are suffering and injustice enough^n
your own lands of Svir alone to justify a revolution. I know'^it ; I
* see it ; I suffer under it ; suffer because I am powerless to remedy
it, and I am supposed to be acquiescent in it. If you albwed me
to interest myselflii your country, I would try not to feel every
hour in it an exile ; and the emptiness and nothingdess of my life
would cease to oppress and to torment me ”

“SUence!” said Zouroff, with petulance. “You may come

MOTHS.

281

licro for prayer, b^t I do not come here for sermons. The empti-
ness of your life ! What do you mean ? You are young, and you
are beautiful ; and you have in me a husband who asks nothing of
you except to look well and to spend money. Cannot you be
liappy ? Think of your new cases from Worth’s, and let political
agitators keep the monopoly of tlieir incendiary rubbish. You
Iiavc been tlio beauty of Paris and Petersburg for three years,
'i’hat should satisfy any woman.”

“ It merely insults me,” she answered him. “ Society comes
and stares. So it stares at the actress Noisette, so it stares at that
jiameless woman whom you call Casse-une-Crofite. Is that a thing
to be proud of? You may be so ; I am not. Men make me com-
pliments, or try to make them, that I esteem no better than insults.
Your own friends are foremost. They talk of my portraits, of my
busts, of my jewels, of my dresses. Another year it will be some
one else that they will talk about, and they will cease to look at
me. ^Jbey find me cold, they find me stupid. I am glad that
they do ; if they did otherwise, I should have lived to despise
inysclf.”

** Nom de Dieu!'* muttered Zouroff; and he stared at her,
wondering if she had said tlie names of Noisette and Casse-une-
Orofite by hazard, or if she knew ? He began to think she knew.
He had always thought her blind as a statue, ignorant as a nun ;
but, as she stood before him, for the first time letting loose the
disdain and the weariness that consumed her heart into w^ords, he
began slowly to perceive that, though he had wedded a child, she
was a child no longer ; he began to perceive that, after three years
in the great world, his wife had grown to womanhood with all that
knowledge which the great world alone can give.

As she had said nothing to him, after the Kermessc, of the
absence of Noisette, he had fancied her anger a mere houtade, duo
perhaps to pride, w'hich he knew was very strong in her. Now ho
saw that his wife’s silence had arisen not from ignorance but from
submission to what she conceived to be her duty, or perhaps, more
likely still, from scorn ; a scorn too profound and too cold to stoop
to reproach or to reproof.

“ Why cannot you be like any other woman ? ” he muttered.
“ Why cannot you content yourself with your chiffons, your con-
quests, your beauty? If you were an ugly woman one could
understand your taking refuge in religion and politics; but, at
your age, with your face and figure! Good heavens! it is too
ridiculous 1 ”

The eyes of Vere grew very stem.

“ That is your advice to mo ? to content myself with my
chiffons and my conquests ? ”

“ Certainly^, any other woman would. I know you are to be
trusted ; you will never let men go too far.”

If 1 dragged your name in the dust throughout Europe you

282

MOTm

would deserve it,” thought his wife ; and a hitter, retort rose to her
lips. But she had been reared in other ways than mere obedience
to every impulse of act or speech. She still believed, despite the
world about her, that the word she had given in her marriage vow
required her forbearance and her subjection to Sergius Zouroff — she
was still of the “ old fashion.”

She controlled her anger and her disdain, and turned her face
full on him with something pleading and wistful in the proud eyes
that had still the darkness of just scorn.

** You prefer the society of Noisette and Casse-une-Crodte ; why
do you need mine too? Since they amuse you, and can content
you, cannot you let mo be free of all this gilded bondage, which is
but n shade better than their gilded infamy ? You bid mo occupy
myself with chiffons and conquests. I care for neither. Will you
give mo what I could care for ? This feverish frivolous life of the
great world has no charm for me. It suits me in nothing ; neither
in health nor taste, neither in mind nor body. I abhor it. I was
reared in other ways, and with other thoughts. It is horrible to
me to waste the year from one end to the other on mere display,
mere dissipation — to call it amusement is absurd, for it amuses no
one. It is a monotony, in its way, as tiresome as any other.”

“ It is the life we all lead,” he interrupted her with some im-
patience. “ There is intrigue enough in it to salt it, God knows ! ”

** Not for me,” said Vere coldly, with an accent that made him
feel ashamed, “ You do not understand me — 1 suppose you never
will ; but, to speak practically, will you let me pass my time oti
one of your estates ; if not hero, in Poland, where the people suffer
more, and where I might do good? I have more strength of
purpose than you fancy ; I would educate the peasant children, and
try and make your name beloved and honoured on your lands — not
cursed, as it is now. Let me live that sort of life, for half the year
at least ; let me feel that all the time God gives me is not utterly
wasted. I helped many in Paris ; I could do more, so much more,
here. I would make your people love me; and tlien, perhaps,
peace at least would come to me. I am most unhapi3y now. You
must have known it always, but I think you never cared.”

The simplicity of the words, spoken as a child would have
spoken them, had an intense pathos in them, uttered as they were
by a woman scarcely twenty, who w^as supposed to have the world
at her feet. For one moment they touched the cold heart of
Zourofif, as once before at Felicity the uplifted eyes of Vere had
.touched him at their betrothal, and almost spurred him to renun-
ciation of her and refusal of her sacrifice. And she looked so
young, with her hair falling hack over her shoulders, and behind
her the white crucifix and the stars of the morning skies — and her
child had died here at Svir. ^ .

For the moment his face softened, and he was moved to a
vague fomorse and a vague pity ; for a moment Noisette and Cassc-

MOTHS.

283

une-Croflte, and eyen Jeanne do Sonnaz, looked to liim vulgar and
common beside his wife ; for a moment verres epaia du cabaret
brutal seemed tainted by the many lips that used them, and this
pure golden cup seemed worthy of a god. But the moment passed,
and the long habits and humours of a loose and selfish life resumed
their sway within him ; and he only saw a lovely woman whom he
had bought as he bought the others, only with a higher price.

He took the loose gold of her hair in his hands with a sudden
caress and drew her into his arms.

“ Fardieu / ” he said with a short laugh. “ A very calm pro-
position for a separation ! That is what you drive at, no doubt ; a
separation in which you should have all the honours as Princess
Zourofif still ! No, my lovely Vera, I am not disposed to gratify
you, — so. You belong to me, and you must continue to belopg to
me, nilly- willy. You are too handsome to lose, and you should be
grateful for your beauty ; it made you mistress of Svir. Pshaw !
how you shudder ! You forget you must pay now and then for
your diamonds.”

There are many martyrdoms as there are many prostitutions
that law legalises and the churches approve.

She never again prayed in her oratory. The ivory Christ had
failed to protect her.

All the month long there was the pressure of social obligations
upon her, the hothouse atmosphere of a Court about her, for
Imperial guests followed on those who had left a few days earlier,
and there could be no hour of freedom for the mistress of Svir.

Her mother was radiantly, content ; Count Kostrow was charm-
ing ; and a Grand Duke found her still a pretty woman ; play was
high most nights ; and the Sicilian was forgotten. All that troubled
her was that her daughter never looked at her if she could help it,
never spoke to her except on the commonplace courtesies and trifles
of the hour. Npt that she cared, only she sometimes feared other
people might notice it.

These days seemed to Vere the very longest in all her life. Her
apathy had changed into bitterness, her indifference was growing
into despair. She thought, with unutterable scorn,' “If the w^orlcl
would only allow it, ho would have Casse-une-Oroflte here 1 ”

She was nothing more in her husband’s eyes than Cassc-uue-
Crofite was.

All the pride of her temper, ^nd all the purity of her nature,
rose against him. As she wore his jewels, as she sat at his table,
as she received his guests, as she answered to liis name, all her
soul was in revolt against him ; such revolt as to the women of her
world seemed the natural instinct of a woman towards her husband,
a thing to be indulged in without scruple or stint, but which to
her, in wluom ^ere all the old faiths and purities of a forgotten
creed, seemed a sin.

A sinl — did the world know of such a thing ? Hardly. Now

284

MOTHS.

and then, for sake of its traditions, the world ^took some hapless
hoy, or some still yet uiihappier woman, and pilloried one of them,
and drove them out under a shower of stones, selecting them b>f
caprice, persecuting them without justice, slaying them because they
were friendless. But this was all.

For the most part, sin was an obsolete thing; archaic and
unheard of; public prints chronicled the sayings and the doings
of Noisette and Cassc-une-Orodte ; society chirped and babbled
merrily of all the filth that satirists scarce dare do more than hint
at, lest they fall under the law. There was no longer on her eyes
the blindness of an innocent unconscious youth. She saw corrup-
tion all around her ; a corruption so general, so insidious, so lightly
judged, so popular, that it was nearly universal ; and amidst it the
lew isolated souls, that it could not taint and claim and absorb,
were lost as in a mist, and could not behold each other.

A dull hopelessness weighed upon her. Her husband had
counselled her to lose herself in chiffons and in conquests !

She knew very well he would not care if she obeyed him ; nay,
that he would perhaps like her the better. As he had often bade
her put red upon her checks, so he would have awakened to a,
quicker esteem of her if he had seen her leaving ball-rooms in tlie
light of morning, with the ribbons of the cotillons on her breast,
smiling on her lovers above the feathers of her fan, provoking with
-clfrontery the gaze of passion, answering its avowals with smiling
rei^roof that meant forgiveness, and passing gaily througli the
masque of society with kohl around her eyes, and a jest upon her
mouth, and hidden in her bosom or her bouquet some royal lover’s
-note. He would have esteemed her more highly so. Perhaps,
then, she might even have stood higher in his eyes than Cassc-une-
Crodte.

She thought this, as she sat in the evening at liis table, with
her Imperial guests beside her, and, before her eyes, the glow of the
gold plate with the Zouroff crown upon it. She was as white as
alabaster ; her eyes had a sombre indignation in them ; she worci
her Order of St. Catherine and her necklace of the moth and the
star. '

“ If one did not keep to honour, for honour’s sake,” she thought,
what would he not make me 1 — I should bo viler than any one
of them.’*

For, as she saw her husband’s' face above that broad gleam of
gold, the longing for one instant came over her, with deadly tempta-
ti-m, to take such vengeance as a wife can always take, and teach
him what fruit his own teachings brought, and make him the by-
word and mock of Europe.

The moment passed.

He cannot make me vile,” she thought. “No one can — save
myself.”

Afti her breast heaved quicker with the memory, the ever trem-
bling moth of the med illiou rose and touched the star.

M0TII8. 285

“ An allegory gr a talisman ? ” said one of the Imperial guests
who sat on her right hand, looking at the jewel.

'‘Both, sir,” answered Vere.

Later in the evening, when, after seeing a Proverhe exquisitely
acted, the princes were for the present hour absorbed in the card-
room, Madame N<51aguine lingered for a moment by her sister-in-
law. Vere had gone for an instant on to the terrace, which over-
looked the sea, as did the terrace of F(ilicitu.

“ Are you well to-day, my Vera ? ”

“ As well as usual.”

“ I think Ischl did you little good,”

“ Ischl ? What should Ischl do for me ? The 'i’raun is no
Lethe.”

“ Will you never he content, never he resigned ?”

“ 1 think not.”

Madame Nclaguiiie sighed.

She had never been a good woman, nor a true one, in her world ;
but in her affection for her brother’s wife she was sincere.

“ Tell me,” said Vere abniptly, “ tell me — you are his sister, I
may say so to you — tell me it docs not make a woman’s duty less,
that her husband forgets his ? ”

“ No, dear — at least — no — I suppose not. No, of course not,”
said Madame Nijlaguinc, She had been a very faithless wife her-
self, but of that Vere knew mothiiig.

“It does not change one’s owm obligation to him,” sfiid Vere
wearily, with a feverish flush coming over her face. “ No ; that I
feel. What one promised, one must abide by ; that is quite
certain. Whatever he docs, one must not make that any excuse to
leave him ? ”

She turned her clear and noblo eyes full iipon his sister’s, and
tljc eyes of Madame N^laguinc shunned the gaze and fell.

“ My dear,” she said evasively, “ no, no ; no wife must leave
her husband ; most certainly not. She must bear everything witli-
(uit avenging any insult ; because the world is always ready to
condemn the woman — it hardly ever will condemn the man. And
a wife, however innocent, however deeply to be pitied, is always
in a false position wdien she quits her husband’s house. She is
dSclassde at once. However much other women feel for her, they
will seldom receive her. Her place in the world is gone, and when
slie is young, above all, to break up her married life is social ruin.
Fray, pray do not ever think of that. Sergius has grave faults,
terrible faults, to you ; hut do not attempt to redress them yourself.
You would only lose caste, lose sympathy, lose rank at once. Fray,
pray, do ;iot think of that.”

Vere withdrew her hand from her sister-in-law’s; a shadow of
disappointraeni; came on her face, and then altered to a sad disdain.

“I was not thinking of what -I should lose,” she said, recovering
her tranquillity. “ That would not weigh with me for a jjioment.

280 MOTHS.

1 was tliinldng of wliat is right ; of what a wilje should ho before
God”

‘‘ You are sublime, my dear,” said the Russian princess, a little
irritably because her own consciousness of her own past smote her
and smarted. “ You arc sublime. But you are many octaves higher
than our concert pitch. No one now ever thinks in the sort of way
that you do. You would have been a wife for Milton. My brother
is, alas ! quite incapable of appreciating all that devotion.”

“ Ilis power of appreciation is not the measure of my conduct,”
said Vere, with a contempt that would have been bitter had it not
been so weary.

“ That is happy for him,” said his sister drily. “ But, in sad
and sober truth, my Vera, your ideas are too high for the world we
live in ; you are a saint raising an orillamme above a holy strife ;
and wc are only a rabble of comnion maskers — who laugh,”

“You can laugh.”

“ I do not laugh, heaven knows,” said her sistcr-iu-law, with a
glisten of water in her shrewd, bright eyes, that could not bear the
<‘anclid gaze of Vere. “Ido not laugh. I understand you. If 1
never could have been like yon, I revere you — yes. But it is of
no use, ray dear, no use, alas ! to bring these true and high emotions
into common life. Tlicy are too exalted; they arc lit for liighcr
air. Bough ly and coarsely if you will, but truly, I will tell^oii
ilicro is nothing of nobility, nothing of duty, in marriage, as our
world sees it; it is simply — a convenience, a somewhat clumsy
contrivance to tide over a social difficulty. Do not think of it as
anything else; if you do, one day disgust will seize you ; yourhigli
and holy faiths will snap and break; and then ”

“ And then ? ”

“Then you will be of all women most unhappy; for I think
yon could not endure yonr life if you des])iscd yourself.”

“ I have endured it,” said Vere in a low voice. “ You think 1
liave not despised myself every day, every night ? ”

“ Not as I mean, 'ilio wrong has been done to you. You have
done none. All the difference lies there — ah, such a difference,
2 ijy dear! The difference between the glacier and the mud-
torrent ! ”

Vere was silent. Then, with a shiver, she drew her wraps
about her as the cold wind came over the sea.

“Shall we go in the house? It is chilly liere,” she said to her
sister-in-law.

MOTHS.

287

CHAPTER XXII.

The t<vo shooting-months passed at Svir; brilliantly to all tho
i:;uests, tediously and bitterly to the mistress of the place. Lady
ilolly had early vanished to see the fair of Nijni Novgorod with a
pleasant party, and Count llostrow for their guide ; and had vague
thoughts of going down tho river and seeing the spurs of the Cau-
casus, and meeting her husband in St. Petersburg, where, so
< Tiraptured was she with the country, she almost tliought she
would persuade him to live. Hue Paul and Duchesse Jeanne had
gone on a round of visits to friends in Croatia, Courland, and
Styria. Troops of guests in succession liad arrived, stayed at,
and departed from, the great Zouroff palace on the Baltic;* and,
when tho jirst snows were falling, Sergius Zourofl' travelled back
to his villa on the lliviera with no more preparation or hesitation
t han he would have needed to drive from the Barrito de I’Etoile
to tho Kue Holder.

'^What waste it all is!” thought his wife, as she looked at
the grand front of Svir, its magniticent forests and its exquisite
gardens. For ten months out of the year Svir, like F^licitd, was
like a hundred thousand castles and palaces in Europe ; it served
-mly for tho maintenance and pleasure of a disorderly and idle
troop of hirelings, unjust stewards, and fattening thieves of all
sorts.

“What would you do with it if you had your way?” asked
Madame Nelaguine.

tShe answered, “ I would live in it ; or I would turn it into a
Ivussian St. Cyr.”

“Always sublime, my love!” said Madame Nelaguine, with
a touch of asperity and ridicule.

The towers of Svir fade^ from Yero’s sight in the blue mists of
(.'veiling; a few days and nights followed, and then the crockotted
pinnacles and metal roofs of the lliviera villa greeted her sight
against the blue sky and tho blue water of the gulf of Saint-
Ilospice.

“ This is accounted the perfection of life,” she thought. “ To
have half a dozen admirably appointed hotels all your own, and
among them all — no home I ” •

The married life of Vere had now begun to pass into that stage
common enough in our day, when tho husband and the wife are
utter strangers one to another; their only exchange of words being
when the presence of others compels it, and their only appearance
together being w‘hen society necessitates it.

A sort .of fehr had fallen on Sergius Zouroff of her, and she was
thankful to be left in peace. Thousands of men and women live
thus in the world ; never touch each other’s hand, never se^lk each

MOTHS.

^88

other’s glance, never willingly spend five seconds alone, yet make
no scandal and have no rupture, and go out into society together,
and carry on the mocking semblance of union till death parts them.

Again and again Vere on her knees in her solitude tried to
examine the past and see what blame might rest on her for her
failure to influence her husband and withhold him from vice, but
she could see nothing that she might have done. Even had she
been a woman who had loved him she could have done nothing.
His feeling for her had been but a mere animal* impulse ; his habits
were engrained in every fibre of his temper. If she had shown him
any tenderness, ho would have repulsed it with some cynical word;
fidelity to his ear was a mere phrase, meaning nothing; honour in
his creed was comprised in one thing only, never to shrink before
a man. Even if she had been a woman who had cared for him she
would have had no power to alter his ways of life. Innocent
women seldom have any influence. Jeanne do Sonnaz could always
influence Zourolf; Vere never could have done so, let her have
essayed what she would. For be the fault where it may in our
social system, the wife never has the power or the dominion that
has the mistress.

A proud woman, moreover, will not stoop as low as it is neces-
sary to do to seize the reins of tyranny over a fickle or sluggish-
tempered man ; what is not faithful to her of its own will, a proud
woman lets go where it may without efibrt, and with resignation,
or with scorn, according as love or indiflerence move her to the
faithless.

The first thing she saw on her table at Villafranca was a letter
from her mother.

Lady Dolly had found the Caucasus quite stupidly like the
Engadine; she thought St. Petersburg a huge barrack and hideous;
weather was horribly cold, and she i.vas coming back to Paris as
quickly as she could. She would just stay a day, passing, at the
villa.

“ Count Rostrow has not come up to her expectations of him,”
thought Madame Nelaguine.

Vere said nothing.

If she could have prayed for anything, she would have prayed
never to bo near her mother. Lady Dolly was a living pain, a
living shame, to her, now, even as she had been on that first day
when she had stepped on shore from the boat of Corr5zo, and seen
the figure of her mother in the black and yellow stripes of the
bathing-dress out in the full sunshine of Trouville.

But Lady Dolly wanted to forget the slights of Count Rostrow;
wanted to play at Monaco; wanted to be seen by her English
friends with her daughter ; and so Lady Dolly, who never studied
any wishes but her own, and never missed a point in the game of
self she always played, chose to come, and as she drove up between
the laurel and myrtle hedges, and looked at the white walls and

MOTHS.

289

green verandahs ©f the villa, rising above the palms, and magnolias,
and Indian coniferss of its grounds, said to herself : “ With three
Ksuch places on three seas, and two such houses in Paris and St.
Petersburg as she has, what on earth can she want to bo happy ? **

Honestly, she could not understand it. It seemed to her very
strange.

“ But she is within a stone’s throw of the tables, and she has
oceans of money, and yet she never plays,” she thought again ; and
this seemed to her yet more unnatural still.

“ She is very odd in all ways,” she thought in conclusion, as
the carriage brushed the scent out of the bruised arbutus leaves
as it passed.

Life for Vere was quieter on the Biviera than elsewhere. There
were but few people in the house ; these spent nearly the whole of
their time at Monte Carlo ; and she had many of her own hours free
to do with as she chose.

Her husband never asked her to go to Monte Carlo. It was the
one phase of the world that he spared her. In himself he felt that
he did not care for those grand grave eyes to see him throwing
away his gold, and getting drunk with the stupid intoxication of
that idiotic passion, with his helles petites about him, and the un-
lovely crowd around. Vere lived within a few miles of the brilliant
Hell under the TCto du Chicn, but she had never once sot foot in it.

The change from the strong air of the Baltic to the hot and
languid autumn weather. of the south affected her strength ; she felt
feverish and unwell. She had been reared in the fierce fresh winds
of the north, and these rose-scented breezes and fragrant orange
alleys seemed to stifle her in ** aromatic pain.”

“Perhaps I grow fretful and fanciful,” she thought, with a
sudden alarm and auger at herself. “ What use is it for me to
blame each iflace I live in? The malady is in myself. If I could
only work, be of use, care for something, I should bo well enough.
If I could be free ” ^

8he paused with a shiver.

Freedom for her could only mean death for her husband. To
the sensitive conscience of Vere it seemed like murder to wish for
any liberty or release that could only bo purchased at such a cost
as that.

Jeanne do Sonnaz could calmly reckon up and compare her
chances of loss and gain if her placid Paul should pass from the
living world ; but Vere could do nothing of the kind. Although
Sergius Zouroff outraged and insulted her in many ways, and was
a daily and hourly horror to her, yet she remained loyal to him,
even in l)jBr thoughts.

“ I eat his bread, and wear his clothes, and spend his gold,” she
thought bitterly. “ I owe him at least fidelity such as his servants
give in exchange for food and shelter I ”

There were times when she was passionately tempted to^ast off

u

290

MOTHS.

c^^ery thing that was his, and go out, alone and unaided, and work
for her living, hidden in the obscurity of poverty, but free at least
from the horrible incubus of an abhorred union. But the straight
and simple rectitude in which she had been reared, the severe
rendering of honour and of obligation in which she had been trained,
were with her too strongly engrained to let her bo untrue to them.

“ I must bide the brent,” she told herself, in the old homely
words of the Border people ; and her delicate face grew colder and
prouder every day. The iron was in her soul ; the knotted cords
were about her waist ; but she bore a brave countenance serenely.
She could not endure that her world should pity her.

Her world, indeed, never dreamed of doing so. Society does not
pity a woman who is a great lady, who is young, and who could
have lovers and courtiers by the crowd if only she smiled once.

Society only thought her — unaraiable.

True, she never said an unkind thing, or did one ; she never hurt
man or woman : she was generous to a fault, and, to aid even peo})le
she despised, would give herself trouble unending. But these are
serious simple qualities that do not show much, and are soon for-
gotten by those who benefit from them. Had she laughed more,
danced more, taken more kindly to the fools and their follies, she
might ha\^c been acid of tongue and niggard of sympathy : society
would have thought her much more amiable than it did now.

Her charities were very large, and they were charities often
done in sccrcsy to those of her own ranlc^ who came to her in the
desperation of their own needs, or their sons' or their brothers' debts
of lionour ; but it would have served her in better stead with the
world if she had stayed for the cotillons, or if she had laughed
heartily when Madame Judic sang.

It would have been so much more natural.

“If she would listen to me!” thought her mother, in the
superior wisdom of her popular little life. “ If she would only kiss
a few women in the morning, and flirt with a few men in the
evening, it would set her all right with them in a month. It is no
use doing good to anybody, they only hate you for it. You have
seen them in their straits ; it is like seeing them without their
teeth or their wig; they never forgive it. But' to be pleasant,
always to be pleasant, that is the thing; and, after all, it costs
nothing.”

But to bo pleasant in Lady Dolly’s, and the world's, meaning
of the words was not possible to Vcrc — Verc, with an acliing heart,
an outraged pride, and a barren future; Vere, haughty, grave, and
delicate of taste, to whom the whole life she led seemed hardly
better or wiser than sitting out the glittering absurdities of the
Timbale d’Argent or Hiniche.

One warm day in December she had the unusual enjoyment of
being alone from noon to night. All in the house were away at
^ilonte Carlo, and Madame Nelaguino had gone for the day to Sun

MOTHS. 291

Kcmo to SCO her* Empress. It was lovely weather, balmy and full
of fragrance, cold, enough to make furs needful at nightfall, hut
without wind, and with a brilliant sun.

Vere wandered about the gardens till she was tired; then, her
eyes lighting on her own felucca moored with other pleasure-boats at
the foot of the garden-quay, she looked over the blue tranquil sea,
went down the stairs, and pushed the little vessel off from shore.
She had never lost her childish skill at boating and sailing. She set
the little sail, tied the tiller-rope to her foot, and, with one oar, sent
Jierself quickly and lightly through the still water, ^’here was
nothing in sight ; the shore was as deserted as the sea. It was only
one o’clock. The orange groves and pine woods shed their sweet
■smell for miles over the sea. She ceased to row, and let the boat
drift with the slight movement of the buoyant air.

She was glad to be alone — absolutely alone ; away from all the
trifling interruptions which are to some natures as mosquitoes to
the flesh.

She passed a fishing-felucca, and asked the fisherman in it if the
weather would hold ; he told her it would bo fine like that till the
new year. She let the boat go on. The orangeries and pine woods
receded farther and farther, the turrets of the villa grew smaller and
smaller in the distance.

Air and sea, spac<> and solitude, were delightful to her. Almost
for the moment, going through that S2)arkling water, she realisoil
her youth, and felt that twenty years were still not on her head.
As she lay back in the little vessel, her shoulders resting on its
silken cushions, the oar being idle, her eyes gazing wistfully into
the depths of the Jizurc sky, she did not see a canoe that, lying off
the shore when she had taken the water, had followed her at a
little distance.

Suddenly, with a quick, arrow-like dart, it covered the space
dividing it from her, and came alongside of her boat.

“ Princesse,” said the voice of Correze, " the sea is kind to me,
whether it be in north or south. But are you quite wise to he so
far out on it all alone ? ”

lie saw the face, that never changed for all the praise of princes
or the homage of courts, and always was so cold, grow warm and
lighten with surprise and welcome, wonder in the great grave eyes,
a smile on fhe proud mouth.

“ You I ” she said simply.

He had had much flattery and much honour in his life, but
nothing that had ever seemed to him so sweet, so great, as that one
word, and the accent of it.

“11” he said simply too, without compliment. “I am a stormy
petrel, you know ; never at rest. I could not help hovering near
your lonely sail in case of any sudden change of weather. These
waters are very treacherous.”

“ Arc they ? ” said Vere witliout thinking. She grew confused ;

292

MOTES.

aht tliouglit of the Wolfinia, of the Kcrmcsse, her hushand's
invitation to Svir, of his last words in the Spitalkirche ; of many
things all at once; and the gladness with which she saw him
startled her — it seemed so strange to be so glad at anything !

“ The fisherman says this weather will last till the new year,”
she said, feeling that her voice was not quite steady.

Correze had one hand on the side of her boat.

“The fisherman should know better than I, certainly,” he
answered. “But they are over-sanguine sometimes; and there
is a white look in the south that I do not like, as if Africa were
sending us some squall. If I mi^t venture to advise you, I would
say turn your helm homeward. You are very far off shore.”

“ You are as far.”

“ I followed you.”

Vere was silent; she spent the next few moments in tacking
and bringing the head of her little vessel landward once more.

“ I thank you,” said Correze, as she obeyed him.

She did not ask him why.

“There is no tide, the clever people tell us, in the Mediter-
ranean,” he continued. “But there is something that feels very
unpleasantly like it sometimes, when a boat wants to go against
the wind. You see a breeze has sprung up; that white cloud
yonder will be black before very long.”

“ Are wo really very far from the land ? ”

“ A mile or two. It will take some stiff rowing to got there.”

“ But the sun is so bright- — -- ”

“ Ah, yes. I have seen the sun biilliant one moment, and the
next the white squall was down in a fury of whirling mist and
darkened air. Take your second oar.”

The wind began to stir, as he had foreseen, the white in the
south grew leadcn-colourcd, the swell in the sea grew heavy. Vere
took in her sail, and the resistance of the water to the oars grew
strong for her hands.

“ With your permission,” said Correze ; and he balanced himself
on his canoe, tied its prow to the stern of her boat, and leapt lightly
into her little vessel.

“ If it get rougher, that might have become harder to do,” he
said apologetically ; “ and in the sea that wo shall soon have, j’ou
will be unable to both steer and rqw^ Will you allow me to take
your oars ? ”

She gave them to him in silence, and took the tiller-ropes into
her hands.

She saw that he was right.

An angry wind had risen, shrill and chill. The foam of the
tideless sea was blowing around them like white powder scattered
by a great fan. There was a raw, hard feeling in the air, h moment
before so sunny and laden only with the scent of orange and pine-
wood. ‘’The sky was ovprcast, and some sea-birds were screaming.

MOTHS,

293

Neither he nor she spoke ; he bent with a will to his oars, she
steered straight for the shore. The wind chopped and changed, and
came now from the west and now from the mountains — either way
it was against them.

He had taken a waterproof from his canoe and put it about her.
“ Never trust the sun when you come seaward,” he said, with a
smile. Without it she would have been wet through from the
spray, for her gown was only of ivory-white cashmere, and ill-fitted
for rough weather,

Correze rowed on in silenco, pulling hard against the heavy
water.

Both thought of the morning on the sea in Calvados ; and the
memory was too present to both for either to speak of it.

“ There is no real danger,” he said once, as the boat was swept
by the rush of white water.

“ I am not afraid ; do you think I am ?” said Vere, with a mo-
mentary smile.

“ No, I do not. Fear is not in your temper,” said Correzo, “ But
most other women would be ; the sea will soon stand up like a
stone wall between us and the land.”

“Yes?” said Vere absently; she was thinking very little of the
sea ; then she added, with a sudden recollection, and a pang of self-
reproach, “I was very imprudent; I am sorry; it is I wlio have
brought you into this danger — for danger I think there must be.”

“Oh! as for tliat — said Correze, and he lauglud lightly.
In his heart ho thought, “ To die with you — how sweet it would
be 1 How right were the old poets ! ”

Peril, to a degree, there was, because it became very probable
that the cockle-shell of a pleasure-boat might heel over in the
wind and swell, and they might have to swim for their lives ; and
they w'ere still a long way off the land. But neither of them
thought much of it. He was only conscious that she was near
him, and she was wondering why such deep peace, such sweet
safety, always seemed to fall on her in his presence.

The sea rose, as ho had said, and looked like a grey wall between
them and the coast. Mists and blowing surf obscured the outlines
of the land; but sbe held the head of the boat straight against the
battling waves, and ho rowed with the skill 4ihat he had learned of
Venetians and Basque sea-folk in sudden storms; and, slowly but
safely, at the last they made tlwir way through the fog of foam and
whirling currents of variously driving winds, and brought the little
vessel with the canoe rocking behind it up on to the landing-stairs
that she had left in the full flood of sunshine two hours before.
There was no rain, but the sky was very dark, and the spray was
being driven hither and thither in showers,

“ Are you wet at all, Prinoesse?” he asked as they landed.

She turned on the steps and held out her hand.

“ You have saved my life,” she said in a low voice. . He bowed
low over her hand, but did not touch it w’th his lips.

294

MOTES.

“ I am happy,” he said briefly.

There was a crowd of servants and outdoor men above on the
head of the little garden-quay, Loris leaping and shouting in their
midst, for all the household had discovered its mistress’s absence
and the absence of the boat, and had been greatly alarmed ; for, if
her world disliked her, her servants adored her, even while they
were a little afraid of her.

“ She is like no one else ; she is a saint,” said the old Eiissian
steward very often. “ But if she be ever in wrath with you—ah,
then it is as if St. Dorothea struck you with her roses and broke
your back ! ”

Even as they landed the clouds burst, the rain began to fall in
torrents, the sea leaped madly against the sea-wall of the gardens.

“ You will come in and wait at least till the storm passes ? ” she
said to Correze. He hesitated.

Into Prince Zouroff’s house I ” he said aloud, with a shadow on
his face.

“ Into my house,” she said with a shade of rebuke in her tone.

“ You are too good, madame ; but, if you will permit me, I will
seem ungrateful and leave you.”

The servants were standing around on the strip of variegated
marble pavement that separated the sea-wall from the house. He
only uttered such words as they might hoar.

Vere looked at him with a wistful look in the haughty eyes that
he would not see.

“You have saved my life,” she said again in a soft hushed
voice.

“ Nay, nay,” said Correze, “ you have too many angels surely
ever about your steps to need a sorry mortal I Princesse — adieu.”

“ But you are staying near here ? ”

“ A few days — a few hours. I am en route from Milan to Paris.
I like Paris best when I am not on an Alp. Life should bo tout ou
rien. Either the boulevard or the hermitage.”

He did not tell her that he had come by the Kiviera for sake of
seeing the turrets of her home above the sea, for sake of the chance
of beholding her walk by him in the sun upon the terrace above.

“Will you not wait and see — my husband?” she said a little
abruptly, with a certain effort.

“ I have not the honour to know Prince Zouroff.”

“ He will wish to thank you ,” the words seemed to choke her ;

she could not finish them.

Correze bowed with his charming grace.

“ Piincesse 1 When shall I persuade you that I have done nothing
for which to be thanked ! If I may venture to remind you of so
prosaic a thing, your dress must be damp, and mine is wet ’through,
I beseech you to change yours at once.”

“ Ah ! how thoughtless I am ! But if you will not come in, will
you accept a carriage or a horse ? ”

MOTES.

295

“ Thanks, no ; a quick walk will do me far more good. If you
will give the can6o shelter I shall bo very indebted ; but for myself
the shore in this wind is what will please me most. It will make
me think of the old tourmentes of my home mountains. Prineesso,
once more — adieu.”

She gave him her hand ; he bent over it ; a mist came before
her eyes that was not from the driving of the sea spray. When it
cleared from her eyelids, Correze was gone,

“ If I had entered the house with her I could not have answered
for my silence. It was best to come away whilst I could,” ho
thought, as ho went on along the Corniche, with the winds and the
rains beating him back at each step, and, below him and beyond,
tlie sea a mass of white and grey steam and froth.

When Prince Zouroff returned from Monte Carlo, he brought
several guests with him to dinner. He had won largely, as very rich
men often do ; he was in a good humour because he had been well
amused ; and ho liad been driven homo by his orders at so terrific a
pace in the storm that one horse had dropped dead when it reached
the stables. But this was not a very uncommon occurrence with
him ; a carriage-horse did not matter ; if it had been one of his
racers it would have been a dilTcrcnt business. That was all ho said
about it.

Vere went up to him after dinner and took him aside one
moment.

“ I was on the sea in the beginning of the storm.”

What were you doing ? ”

** Bowing myself — all alone.”

“ A mad freak ! But nothing happened. All is well that ends
well.”

Yes.” Vere’s teeth were shut a little as she spoke, and her
lips were pale. “ It might not have ended so well — if it be well to
live — had it not been for M. de Correze. He was in a canoe and
warned mo in time.”

The singer ? ”

** M. de Correze.”

“ Well, there is only one ; you mean the singer ? How came he
near you?”

I do not know.”

“ And what did he do ? ”

“ He saved my life.” •

Sergius Zouroff looked wearied.

“ You are always so emotional, ma chhre. Do you mean he did
anything I ought to acknowledge ? Whore is he to be found ? ”

“ I do not know.”

“ Oh, I can hear at the Cercle. But are you not talking in
hyperboles ? ”

“ I told you the fact. I thpught you ought to know it.”

“ Ah, yes,” said her husband, who was thinking of other things.

296

MOTHS.

But lie did not come to sing at Svir. I cannot forgive that. How-
ever, I will send my card, and then you can ask Kim to dinner. Or
send him a diamond ring — artists always like rings.”

Vere turned away.

“ I remember hearing once,” said Lady Dorothy, approaching
him, that Corr6ze had one thousand three hundred and seventy-
six diamond rings, all given him by an adoring universe. You must
think of something more original, Sergius.”

Ask him to dinner.” said Prince Zouroff, “ People do ; though
it is very absurd.”

Then he went to the card-room for dcartS, thinking no more of
his wife than he thought of his dead horse.

“ Corr^ze and the sea seem quite inseparable — quite like Leander,”
said Lady Dolly, who had heard the whole story before dinner from
her maid, when she too had returned from Monte Carlo. But she
said it half under her breath, and did not dare speak of it to her
daughter ; she was haunted by that memory of the letter she had
received from Moscow, the letter of Correzo that she had burned and
left unanswered.

“It is odd ho should have been in that canoe just to-day, when
wo wore all away,” she thought with the penetration of a woman
who knew her world, and did not believe in accidents, as she had
once said to her child. “ And to say she does not know where lie
is — that is really too ridiculous. I am quite sure Vere never will
do anything— anything — to make people talk, but I should not be
in the least surprised if she were to insist on something obstinate
and romantic about this man. She is so very emotional. Zouroff
is right, she is always in the clouds. That comes of being brought
up on those moors by that German, and Corr^ze is precisely the
person to answer these fancies — even in daylight at a concert he is
so handsome, and even in dinner-dress he always looks like Romeo.
It would really bo too funny if she ever did get talked about — so
cold, and so reserved, and so quite too dreadfully and awfully good
as she is ! ”

And Lady Dolly looked down the drawing-rooms at her daughter
in the distance, as Vere drew her white robes slowly through her
salons ; and she thought, after all, one never knew

The next day Zouroff's secretary sent his master’s card to the
hotel where he learned that Corr^ze was staying, and sent also an
invitation to dinner at an early date, Corroze sent his card in return,
and a refusal of the invitation, based on the plea that he was leaving
Nice.

When he had written his refusal, Correze walked out into the
street. He met point-blank a victoria with very gaudy liveries, and,
in the victoria, muffled in sables, sat a dark-skinned, ruby-lipped
woman.

The brilliant and insouciant face of Correze grew dark, and ho
frowned.

MOTHS.

297

The woman \^as Oassc-une-Croiite.

“ The brute ! he muttered. “ If I sat at his table I should be
choked — or I should choke him."

As he went on he heard the gay people in the street laughing,
and saw them look after the gaudy liveries and the quadroon.

His wife is much more beautiful, and as white as a lily,” one
man said. That black thing throws glasses and knives at him
sometimes, they say.”

“ I protected her from Noisette. I cannot protect her here,”
thought Corroze. “ Perhaps she will not know it ; God send her
ignorance.”

The talk of Nice was Casse-une-Crohte, who had arrived but a
week or so before. She had a villa in the town, she had her carriage
and horses from Paris, she spent about sixty napoleons a day, with-
out counting what she lost at Monte Carlo ; the city preferred her to
any English peeress or German princess of them all. When the
correspondents of journals of society sent their budgets from Nice
and Monaco, they spoke first of all of Casse-unc-Croute— the Princess
Zouroff came far afterwards with other great ladies in their chronicles.

AVhen Cassc-unc-Crofite after supper set fire to Prince Zouroff^s
beard, and shot away her chandelier with a saloon pistol, her feats
were admiringly recorded in type. Vere did not read those papers,
so she knew nothing ; and the ignorance Correze prayed for her re-
mained with her; she did not even know that Casse-une-Crofite was
near her.

A little later in that day Correze met Lady Dolly at Monte
Carlo. She greeted him with eflusion ; ho was courteous, but a
little cold. She felt it, but she would not notice it.

“ So you saved my Verc’s life yesterday, Correze ? ” she said
with charming cordiality. “So like you I Always in some heau

“ It would be a lean rdle, indeed, to have saved the Princess
Zouroff from any danger ; but it is not for me. I warned her of the
change in the weather ; that was all."

“ You are too modest. True courage always is. I think you
rowed her boat home for her, didn’t you V "

“ Part of the way — yes. The sea was heavy.”

“ She quite thinks you saved her life,” said Lady Dolly. “ My
5weet Vera is always a littlo exalt ee, you know ; you can see that
if you look at her. One always rather expects to hear her speak in
blank verso ; don’t you know what I mean ? "

“ Madame, I have heard so much blank verse in my life that I
should as soon expect frogs to drop from her lips,” answered Cor-
reze a littlo irritably. “ No ; I do not think I know what you mean.
The Princess Vera seems to mo to play a very difficult part in the
world’s play with an exquisite serenity, patience, and good taste."

“ A difficult part ! Goodness ! My dear Corroze, she has only
to look beautiful, go to courts, and spend money I "

208

MOTES.

“ And forgive Infidelity, and bear with outrage "

His voice was low, but it was grave and even stem, as his face
was.

Lady Dolly, who was going up towards the great Palace of Play,
stopped, stared, and put up a scarlet sunshade, which made her
look as if she blushed.

“My dear Corr^zel I suppose people of genius are privileged,
but otherwise— really — ^you have said such an extraordinaiy thing
I ought not to answer you. The idea of judging between married
people 1 The idea of supposing that Prince Zouroff is not every-
thing he ought to be to his wife ”

Corrdze turned his clear lustrous eyes full on her.

“ Miladi,” he said curtly, “ I wrote you some truths of Prince
Zouroff from Moscow long ago. Did you read them ? ”

mere stories!” said Lady Dolly vaguely and
nervously; *^you know I never listen to rumours; people are so
horridly uncharitable.”

“ You had my letter from Moscow, then ?

“ Oh yes, and answered it,” said Lady Dolly with aplomh,

“ 1 think you forgot to answer it,” said Correze quietly ; “ your
answer was Q. fairepart to the marriage,”

“ I am sure I answered it,” said Lady Dolly once more, looking
up into the scarlet dome of her umbrella.

“ I told you and proved to you that the man to whom you wished
to sacrifice your child was a mass of vice ; of such vice as it is the
fashion to pretend to believe shut up between the pages of Suetonius
and Livy. And I offered, if you would give me your young daughter,
to settle a million of francs upon her and leave the stage for her
sake. Your answer was the faire part of the Zouroff marriage.”

“ I answered you,” said Lady Dolly obstinately ; “ oh dear
yes, I did. I can’t help it if you didn’t get it ; and 1 had told you
at Trouville it was no use, that idea of yours ; you never were
mefint to marry — so absurd! — you are far too charming; and,
besides, you know you are an artist ; you can’t say you are not.”

“ I am an artist,” said Correze, with a flash sombre and brilliant
in his eyes that she could not front, “ but I have never been a
beast, and had I wedded your daughter I would not have been an
adulterer.”

“ Hus-s-sh ! ” said Lady Dolly, scandalised. Such language was
terrible to her, though she did laugl at the Petit Due and Niniohe.
“ Hus-s-sh, hush— pmy ! ”

But Correze had bowed and had left her.

Lady Dolly went on between the cactus and the palms and the
myrtles looking dreamily up into the scarlet glow of her sunshade,
and thinking lhat when you let artists and people of that sort into
your world they were quite certain to froisser you sooner or later.
“ And I am sure he is in love with her still,” she thought as she
joined some pleasant people and went up to the great building to

MOTHS.

29D

hear the music, only for that ; the music at Monte Carlo is always
so good.

As if I would ever have given my child to a singer ! ” she
thought in the disgust ot mingled virtue and pride. ^

At the entrance of the hall she met her son-in-law, who was
coming out, having won largely.

“ I forgot my purse, Sergius ; lend me the sinews of war,*' said
Lady Dolly with a laugh.

He handed her some rouleaux.

“ Some one would plunder mo hcforel got through the gardens,*’
he said to himself as he sauntered on, “ it may as well he Dolly as
another.**

Lady Dolly went on and staked her gold. At the same table
with her were Aim6e Tincoe of the Hippodrome, and Casse-urio-
Crodto ; but Lady Dolly was not hurt by that either in pride or
virtue.

The real Commune is Monte Carlo.

Meanwhile Correze did not approach Vere,

“ If you ever need a servant or an avenger call me,” ho had said
to her, but ho had known that she never would call him. From
afar off he had kept watch on her life, but that was all.

She knew that he was near her, and the knowledge changed the
current of her days from a joyous routine to a sweet yet bitter
unrest. When the sun rose she thought, “shall I see himV”
When it set she thought, “will he come to-morrow?” The ex-
pectation gave a flush of colour and hope to her life which with all
its outward magnificence was chill and pale as the life of a pauper
because its youth was crushed under the burden of a loveless
splendour.

For the first time this warm winter of the southern seaboard,
with its languid air, its dancing sunbeams, its odours of roses and
violets and orange-buds, seemed lovely to her. She did not reason ;
she did not reflect ; she onljr vaguely felt that the earth had grown
beautiful.

Once while the air was still dark with the shadows of night, but
tlie sky had the red of the dawn, she, lying wide awake upon her
bed, heard a voice upon the sea beneath her windows singing the
Stella virgine, madre pescatore I of the Italian fishermen, and knew
that the voice was his.

At that hour Sergius Zouroff was drinking brandy in the rooms
of Casse-une-Croffte, while the quadroon was shooting the glass
drops off her chandelier.

One day she went to see the village priest about some poor of
the place, and sought him at the church of the parish. It was a
little whitewashed barn, no more, but it had thickets of roses about
it and a belt of striped aloes, and two tall palms rose straight above
it, and beyond its narrow door there shone the sea. She went
towards the little sacristy to speak to the priest, Madaxqe N^la-

MOTHS.

300

guino was with hen They met Corrdze on the threshold. Mass
was just over. It was the day of St. Lucy.

“ Have you been to mass at our church and do not visit us ? ”
cried Princess Nadine in reproach as she saw him ; “ that is not
hind, monsieur, especially when we have so much for which to
thank you; my brother would be very glad of an occasion to speak
his gratitude.”

“Prince Zouroif owes mo none, madamc,” said Corrt^zc. Verc
had been silent. “ Is the little church yours? ” he continued. “ It
is charming. It is almost as primitive as St. Augustine or St.
Jerome could wish it to be, and it is full of the smell of the sea
and the scent of the roses.”

“ It is the church of our parish,” said Madame N^daguine ; “ we
have, our own chapel in the villa for our own priest, of course.
Wore you not coming to us? No? You are too farouche. Even
to persons of your fame one cannot allow such wilful isolation ;
and why come to this very gay seaboard if you want to be alone? ”

“ I came by way of going to Paris from Milano ; indeed, in
Paris I must be in a very few days ; I have to see half a score of
directors there. Which of the three seas that you honour with
residence do you prefer, mesdames V ”

“ Why docs Yere not speak to him, and why docs he not look
at her?” thought the Princess N61aguine, as she answered aloud—

“Myself, I infinitely prefer the Mediterranean, but Yere persists
in preferring the narrow colourless strip of the northern channel ;
it is not like her usual good taste.”

“ The climate of Calvados is most like that which the Princess
knew in her childhood,” Correze said with a little haste ; “ child-
hood goes with us like an echo always, a refrain to the ballad of
our life. One always wants one’s cradle-air. Were I to meet with
such an accident as Roger did I would go to a goat-hut on my own
Alps above Sion.”

“ You would ? how charming that would be for the goats and
their sennerins ! ” said Madame Nelaguine as she caught a glimpse
of the priest’s black soutane behind the roses anti chased it through
the hedge of aloes, and caught the good man, w'ho was very shy of
this keen, quick, sardonic Russian lady.

“You might have been dead in those seas the other day — for
me,” said Yere in a low voice, without looking at him, as they
stood alone. '

“ Ah ! nothing so beautiful is in store for me, Princesse,”' he
answered lightly ; “ indeed, you overrate my services ; without me
no doubt you wwld have brought your boat in very well ; you are
an accomplished sailor.”

“ I should have stayed out without noticing the storm,” said
Yere, “ and then — Loris would have been sorry, perliaps.”

Correze was silent.

Hoovould not let his tongue utter the answer that rose to his lips.

MOTHS. 301

“ Wc are too afraid of death,” he said ; “ that fear is the shame
of Ciiristianity.”

“ I do not fear it,” said Verc in a low tone ; her eyes gazed
through the screen of roses to the sea.

“And you have not twenty years on your head yet!” said
Corr^ze bitterly, “ and life should bo to you one cloudless spring
morning only full of blossom and of promise ”

“ I have what I deserve, no doubt.”

“ You have nothing that you deserve.”

Madame Ndlaguinc came back to them with the priest.

“ Why did you not come to Svir ?” she asked of Correze, as the
curate made his obeisance to Vere.

“1 had not the honour to know your brother.”

“ No ; but I believe ”

“ He offered to pay me ? Oh yes. Ho was dans son droit in
doing that; but I too had my rights, and amongst them was the
right to refuse, and I took it. No doubt he did not know that
1 never take payments out of the opera-house.”

“ I see ! you are cruelly proud.”

“Am I proud? Perhaps, I have my own idea of dignity, a
‘poor thing, but my own.’ When I go into society I like to
be free, and so I do not take money from it. Many greater artists
tlian I, no doubt, have thought differently. But it is my
fancy.”

“ But other artists have not been Marquises de Oorreze,” said
^ladame Nelaguino.

“Nay, I have no title, Madame,” said Corrdze ; “ it was buried
in another generation under the snows above Sion, and I have
never dug it up : why should 1 ? ”

“ Why should you, indeed ? There is but one Correze, there
are four thousand marquises to jostle each other in their struggles
for precedence.”

lie laughed a little as die bowed to her. “ Yes, I am Correze
tout court ; I like to think that one word tells its own talc all over
the world to the nations. No doubt this is only another shape of
vanity, and not dignity at all. One never knows oneself. I do
not care to set up my old courofine, it would bo out of jilaco in the
theatres. But I like to think that I have it, and if ever I need U
cross swords with a noble, he cannot refuse on the score of m^
birtli.”

His face grew darker as he spoke, he pulled the roses one from
another with an impatient action ; the quick marmoset eyes of
Madame NeLaguine saw that he was thinking of some personal foe.

“I suppose you have had duels before now? ” she said indiffer-
ently.

“ No,” answered Correze. “No man ever insulted me yet, and
1 think no man ever will. I do not like brawling ; it is a sort of
weakness with my fraternity, who are ao irritable genus. , I have

S02

MOTES,

always contrived to live in amity. But — there are offences for
which there is no punishment except the old one of blood.”

He was thinking of what he had seen that night; Sergius
Zouroff against the shoulder of Casse-une-Croute playing at the
roulette- table whilst his wife was left alone, Madame Ndlaguine
looked at him narrowly ; Vere was standing a little apart listening
to the good priest’s rambling words.

“ M. le Marquis,” she said with a little smile, “ you are very
well known to be the gentlest and sunniest of mortals, as well as
tlie sweetest singer that ever lived. But — do you know— -I think
you could be very terrible if you were very angry, I think it is
quite as well that you do not fight duels.”

“ I may fight them yet,” said Correze, “ and do not give me that
title, madame, or I shall think you laugh at me. I am only
Correze I ”

“ Only I ‘ I am Arthur, said the King ! ’ Will you not be
merciful in your greatness — and come and sing to us as a friend
here, though you would not come as a guest to Svir ? ”

Correze was silent.

“ Do come to-night, you would make mo so proud ; we have a
few people,” urged the Princess Nadine ; “ and you know,” she
added, “ that to me your art is a religion.”

'' You make it difiicult indeed to refuse,” said Correze, “ but I
have not the honour to know Prince Zoui’off.”

With what an accent he says that honour 1” thought the
sister of Zouroff, but she said aloud: “ That is my brother’s mis-
fortune, not his fault. Vere, ask this Boi Soleil to shine on our
house ? Ho is obstinate to me. Perhaps he will not be so to you.”

Vere did not lift her eyes, her face flushed a little as she turned
towards him.

‘‘Wo should bo happy if you would break your rule — for us.”

She spoke with effort ; she could not forget what he had said on
his knees before her in the little church at Old Aussee, Correze
bowed,

“I will come for an hour, mes princesses. aud.I will sing for you
both.”

Then he made his adieu and went away.

Vere and her sister-in-law returned to the house. Madame
N^laguine was unusually grave.

When they went home, they found the newspapers of the day ;
the lightest and wittiest of them contained a florid account of the
rescue from a sea-storm of a Russian Princess by Correze. Without
a name the Russian Princess was so desciibed, that all her world
could know beyond doubt who it was.

“Really position is a pillory nowadays,” said Madame Nela-
guine angrily; “sometimes they pelt one with rose-leaves, and
sometimes with rotten eggs, but one is for ever in the pillory ! ”

Wh^n Sergius Zouroff read it he was very enraged.

MOTHS.

303

"Patience!” stiid his sister drily, when his wife was out of
hearing. " In to-morrow’s number I dare say they will describe
you and the quadroon.”

Then she added, " Corr^zo will come hero this evening ; he will
come to sing for me ; you must not offer him anything, not even a
ring, or you will insult him.”

" Pshaw I ” said Zouroff roughly. " Why do you not get others
to sing for you whom you can pay properly like artists ? There are
many.”

"Many singers like Corr^ze? I am afraid not. But I induced
him to come, not only for his singing, but because when he has
saved your wife’s life, it is as well you should look thankful, even
if you do not feel so.”

“ You grow as romantic as she is, in your old age, Nadine,” said
Zouroff, with a shrug of his shoulders. .

"In old age, perhaps, one appreciates many things that one
overlooks in one’s youth,” said the Princess unruffled, and with a
little sigh. “ Twenty years ago I should not have appreciated your
wife ])erhaps much more than — you do.”

" Do you lind her amusing ? ” he said with a little laugh and a
yawn.

Later in that day Vere drove out alone. Madame Ndlaguine
was otherwise occupied and her mother was away spending a chiy or
two with a friend who had a villa at la Condamino. She had never
once driven down the Promenade des Anglais since she had been on
the Riviera this year, but this day her coachman took his way
along that famous road because the house to which she was going,
a house taken by Vladcmir Zouroff, and at which his wife, a pretty
Galician woman, lay ill, could not so quickly or so easily he reached
any other way. She drove alone, her only companion Loris stretched
on the opposite cushioifb, beside a basket of violets and white
lilacs which she was taking to Sophie Zouroff. The afternoon wuis
brilliant ; the snow-white palaces, the green gardens, and the azure
sea s])arkled in the sunlight ; the black Orloffs flew over the ground
tossing their silver head-j)icces and flashing their fiery eyes ; people
looked after them and told one another " That is the Princess Vera :
look, that is the great Russian’s wife.”

Vere, leaning back with Loris at her feet, bad a white covering
of polar bear-skins cast over hgr ; she had on her the black sables
which had been in her marriage corheille ; the black and white in
their strong contrast enhanced and heightened the beauty of her
face and the fairness of her hair ; she held on her lap a great cluster
of lilies of the valley.

“ That beautiful pale woman is Prince Zouroffs wife ; he must
have strange taste to leave her for a negress,” said one man to
another, as she passed.

There were many carriages out that day as usual before sunset;
the black Russian horses dashed through ^he crew'd at theiir usual

MOTES.

liciidluiig gallop, tossing tlieir undocked manes and tails in fcjstless
pride. Close against them passed two bays at full trot ; the bays
were in a victoria; in the victoria was a woman, swarthy and
lustrous-eyed, who wore a Tlussian kaftan, and had black Russian
sables thrown about her shoulders; she was smoking; she blew
some smoke in the air and grinned from ear to ear as she went past
the Zourolf carriage ; in her own carriage, lying back in it, was
{Sergius Zourolf,

A slight flush, that went over Vere’s face to her temples and
then faded to leave her white as new-fallen snow, was the only sign
she gave that she had recognised her husband with the quadroon
who was called Casse-une-Crohte. Another moment, and the black
OrlolTs, flying onward in a cloud of dust and flood of sunlight, had
left the bays behind them. Vere bent her face over the lilies of
the valley.

Half a mile further she checked their flight, and told the coach-
man to return home by another road instead of going onward to
Sox)hie ZourolFs.

When she reached the villa it was twilight — the short twilight
of a winter day on the Mediterranean. {She went up to her bed-
chamber, took olf her sables, and with her own liands wrapped
them together, rang for her maid, and gave the furs to her.

“ When the Prince comes in take these to bun,'’ she said, in a
calm voice ; “ toll him I have no farther use lo*'* them ; ho may
have some.’'

The woman, who was faithful to her, and knew much of the
])atience with which she bore her life, looked grave as she took
them ; she guessed what had happened.

Tt was six o’clock.

The Princess Nadine came for a cup of yellow tea in Vere’s
dressing-room. She found her gentle and serious as usual ; as usual
a good listener to the babble of pleasant cynicisms and philosophic
commentaries with which Madame Nelaguine always was ready to
garnish and enliven the news of the hour.

Madame Nelaguine did not notice anythingiamiss.

An hour later, when Zourolf came home to dress for dinner, the
waiting-woman, who loved her mistress and was very loyal to her,
took him the sables and the message.

He stared, but said nothing. He understood.

The Prince of Monaco and other Princes dined at the Zouroff
villa that evening. There was a dinner-party of forty people in all.
He did not see his wife until the dinner hour. Yere was pale with
the extreme pallor that had come on her face at sight of the
quadroon ; she wore white velvet and had a knot of white lilac at
her breast, and her only ornaments were some great pearls given
her by the Herberts on her marriage.

Ho stooped towards her a moment under pretext of raising a
handkorchief she had d^ropped.

MOTHS,.

305

Madame,” he*said in a harsh whisper, “ I do not like coups de
tMatrCf and with my actions you have nothing to do. You will
wear your sables and drive on the Promenade des Anglais to-
morrow. Do you hear ? ” he added, as she remained silent. Then
she looked at him.

“ I hear ; but I shall not do it.”

“ You will not do it ? **

«No.”

Their guests entered. Vere received them with her usual cold
and harmonious grace.

“Keally she is a grand creature, * thought Zouroff, with un-
willing respect, " but I will break her will ; I never thought she
had any until this year ; now she is stubborn as a mule.”

^ The long dinner went on its course, and was followed an
animated evening. Madame Nelaguiae had always made tho
Zouroff entertainments more brilliant than most, from their sur-
prises, their vivacity, and their entrain^ and this was no cxcci^tion
to the rest.

That Prince Zouroff himself was gloomy made no cause for
remark ; ho never put any curb on his temper either for society or
in private life, and the -world was used to his fits of moroseness.
“ The Tsar sulks,” his sister would always say, with a laugh, of
him ; and so covered his ill-humour with a jest. This night she
did not jest : her fine instincts told her that there was a storm iu
the air.

About eleven o’clock every one was in the white drawing-room,
called so because it was hung with white silk, and had white china
mirrors and chandeliers. Two clever musicians, violinist and
pianist, had executed some pieces of Liszt and Schumann ; they
were gone, and two actors from the Folies Dramatiques had glided
in as Louis XIII. personages, played a witty little revue y written
for the society of tho hour, and had in turn vanished. Throughout
the long white room — in which the only colour allowed came from
banks and pyramids of rose-hued azaleas — there was on every side
arising that animated babel of polite tongues which, tells a hostess
that her people are well amused with her and with themselves, and
that the spectre of ennui is scornfully exorcised.

Suddenly the doors opened, and the servants announced Correze.

Quel bonheur!” cried Madame Nelaguine; and muttered to
her brother, “ Say something corral and graceful, Sergius ; you can
when you like.”

Correze was bonding low before the mistress of the house ; for
the first time he saw the moth and the star at her throat.

“ Present me to M. de Correze, Vera,” said her husband, and
she did so.

“I owe you much, and I am happy to be able in my own
house to beg you to believe in my gratitude, and to command it
when you will,” said Zouroff, with courtesy and the admirable

806 MOTHS.

manner which he could assume with suavity arid dignity when he
chose. , ,

I was more woatherwise than a fisherman, monsieur ; that is
all the credit I can claim,” said Corrdze, lightly and coldly : every
one had ceased their conversation, men had lost their interest in
women's eyes, the very princes present grew eager, and were thrown
into the shade, Corioze had come. Correze, with the light on his
poetic fixco, his grace of attitude, his sweet, far-reaching voice, his
past of conquest, his present of victory, his halo of fame, his sorcery
of indificreiice.

Correze stood by the side of his hostess, and there was a gleam
of challenge in his eyes, usually so dreamy, this night so luminous ;
he was as pale as she.

came to sing some songs to mesdames, your sister and youi
wife,” said Correze, a little abruptly to Zouroff. “Is that your
piano ? You will permit me ? ”

He moved to it quickly.

“ He knows why he is asked to come,” thought Zouroff, “ but
he speaks oddly ; one would think he were the prince and I the
artist 1 ”

“ He is a rarer sort of prince than ymi,” murmured Madame
Kelaguine, who guessed his thoughts. “ Do not touch him rudely,
or the nightingale will take wing.”

Correze struck one loud chord on the notes, and through the
long white room there came a perfect silence.

Not thrice in twelve months was he over heard out of his own
opera-houses.

He paused with his hands on the keys ; he looked down the
drawing-room, all he saw of all that was round him were a sea of light,
a bloom of rose-red flowers, a woman's figure in white velvet, holding
a white fan of ostrich-feathers in her hand, and with a knot of
white lilac at her breast. He closed his eyelids rapidly one instant
as a man does who is dazzled by flame or blinded with a mist of
tears ; then he looked steadily down the white room and sang a
Noel of Felicien David’s.

Never in all his nights of triumph had ho sung more superbly.
He was still young, and his voice was in its perfection. He could
do what he chose with it, and he chose to-night to hold that little
crowd of tired great people hanging on his lips as though they were
sheep that hearkened to Orpheus.

He chose to show her husband and her world what spell he
could use, what power he could wield ; a charm that their riches
could not purchase, a sorcery their rank could not command. He
was in the mood to sing, and he sang, as generously as in his child-
hood he had warbled his wood-notes wild to the winces of the moun-
tains ; as superbly, and with as exquisite a mastery and science as
he had ever sung with to the crowded theatres of the great nations
of theworld.

MOTHS.

307

The careless and fashionable crowd listened, and was electrified
into emotion. It could not resist ; men were dumb and women
heard with glistening eyes and aching hearts ; Sergius Zouroff, for
whom music rarely had any charm, as he heard that grand voice
rise on the stillness, clear as a clarion that calls to war, and then
sink and fall to a sweetness of scarcely mortal sound, owned its
influence, and as ho sat with his head downward, and his heavy
eyelids closed, felt dully and vaguely that ho was vile, and Deity
l)ercliance not all a fable ; and shuddered a little, and felt liis soul
sJuink before the singer’s as Saul’s in its madness before David.

When Corr^ze paused all were silent. To give him compliment
or gratitude would have seemed almost as unworthy an insult as to
give him gold.

Veie had not moved; she stood before the bank of azaleas* quite
motionless ; she might have been of marble for any sign she gave.

Correze was silent ; there was no sound in the white room
excc[)t the murmur of the waves without against the sea-wall of
the house.

Suddenly he looked up, and the brilliant flash of his gaze met
Sergius Zouroff’s clouded and sullen eyes.

“ I will sing once more,” said Correze, who had risen ; and he
sat down again to the pi«'ino. “ I will sing once more, since you
arc not weary of me. I will sing you something that you never
heard.”

His hands strayed over the chords in that improvisation of
music which comes to the great singer as the sudden sonnet to the
poet, as the burst of wrath to the orator. Correze was no mere in-
terpreter of other men’s melody ; ho had melody in his brain, in his
hands, in his soul.

He drew a strange pathetic music from the keys ; a music sad as
death, yet with a ring of defiance in it, such defiance as had looked
from his eyes when, he had entered, and had stood by the side of the
wife of Zouroff.

He sang La Coupe of Sully Prudhomme ; the Coupe d’Or that
he had quoted on the sands by the North Sea at Schevening,

Dans les verres dpais du cabaret brutal,

Le vin bleu coule h flots, et sans treve h la ronde.

Dans le calice fin plus rarcinent abonde,

Un vin dont la clartd aoit digne du cristal.

Enfin, la coupe d’or du haut d’un pi^destal
Attend, vide toujours, bicn que large et profonde,

Un cru dont la noblesse h. la sienne rdpondc :

On tremble d’en souiller I’ouvrage et le metal,”

He sang iUto music of his own, eloquent, weird, almost terrible;
music that seemed to search the soul as the rays of a lamp probe
dark places.

The person he looked at while he sang "7as Sergius Zouibff.

303

MOTHS.

Lea verves epais du cabaret brutal !

The words rang down the silence that was around him with a
scorn that was immeasurable, with a rebuke that wras majestic.

Sergius Zouroff listened humbly as if held under a spell, his eyes
could not detach their gaze from the burning scorn of the singer.

Les verves Spais du cabaret brutal !

The line was thundered through the stillness with a challenge
and a meaning that none who heard it could doubt, with a i)assion
of scorn that cut like a scourge and si)ared not.

Then his voice dropped low, and with the tenderness of an un-
utterable yearning recited the verse he had not spoken by the sea.

“ Plus Ic vase est grossier de forme et de matihre,

Mieux il trouve a com bier sa contenance enticre,

Aux plus beaux seulcinent il n’est point de li(pieur.”

There was once more a great silence. Vere still stood quite
motionless.

Sergius ZourofT leaned against the white wall with his liead
stooped and his eyes sullen and dull, with an unwilling shame.

CoiTcze rose and closed the piano.

“ 1 came to sing ; I have sung ; you will allow me to leave you
now, for I must go away by daybreak to Paris.^*

And though many tried to keep him, none could do so, and he
went.

Verc gave him her liand as he passed out of the white drawing-
room.

“ I thank you,” she said very low.

The party broke up rapidly; there was a certain embarrassment
and apprehension left on all the guests ; there was not one tlicre
who had not understood the public rebuke given to Sergius Zourolf.

Ho had understood it no less.

But for his pride’s sake, which would not let him own he felt
the disgrace of it, he would have struck the lips of the singer dumb.
When the white room was empty, ho paced to and fro with quick,
uneven steps. His face was livid, his eyes wtre savage, his breath
came and went rapidly and heavily; for the first time in all his
years a man had rebuked him.

“ You asked him here to insult me?” he cried, pausing suddenly
before his wife. She looked him full in the face.

“Ho. There would bo no insult in a poem unless your con-
science made it seem one.”

She waited a moment for his answer, but he was silent ; he only
stared at her with a stifled, bitter oath; she made a slight curtsey
to him, and left his presence without another word.

“ You should honour his com^age, Sergius,” said Madame N<5]a-
guine, who remained beside him; “you must admit it was
courageous.”

A <ixjrriblo oath was, his answer.

MOTHS.

309

“ Courageous 1 ” ho said savagely at last. Courageous ? The
man knows well enough that it is impossible for mo to resent a mere
song ; 1 should be ridiculous, farceur^ and he knows that I cannot
light him — he is a stage-singer ”

“ He thinks himself your equal,*^ she answered quietly ; but
probably your wife is right, it is only yonr conscience makes you
see an insult in a poem.”

“ My conscience ! ” — Sergius Zourolf laughed aloud ; then he
said suddenly, “ Is he Vera’s" lover ? ”

You are a fool,” said the Princess Nadine with tranquil scorn.
“ Your wife has never had any lover, and I think never will have
one. And what lover would rebuke you f Lovers are like husbands
— they condone.”

“ if he be not her lover why should he care ? ”

Madame N^laguine shrugged her shoulders.

“ My dear Sergius, i^eople arc different. Some feel angry at
things that do not in the least concern them, and go out of their
way to redresiS wrongs that have nothing to do with them ; they are
the exaltes members of the world. Correze is one of them. Have
you not said he is an artist ? Now, I am no artist, and never am
cxalteef and yet I also do not like to see the golden cup cast aside
for the cabaret brutal. Good night.”

Then she too left l^im.

The next day Madame Nclaguiiie went up to her sister-in-law
on the sca-terrace of the house. Y ere was sitting by the statue of
the wingless Love ; she had a book in her hand, but she was not
reading, her face was very calm, but there was a sleepless look in her
eyes. The Princess Nadine, who never in her life had known any
mental or physical fear, felt afraid of her ; she addressed her a little
nervously.

Have you slept well, love ? ”

“ Not at all,” said Vere, who did not speak falsely in little things
or large.

“ All !” sighed Madame Nelaguine, and added wistfully, ‘^Yera,
1 want to ask you to be still patient, to do notliing in haste ; in a
word, to forgive still if you can. My dear, I am so pained, so
shocked, so ashamed of all the insults my brother offers you, but be
has bad a lesson very grandly given, — it may profit him, it may
not; but in any way, Yera, as a woman of tlie world who yet can
love you, my love, I want to enkeat you for all our sakes, and your
own above all, not to separate yourself from my brother.”

Yore, who had her eyes fixed on the distant snows of the moun-
tains of Esterellc, turned and looked at her with a surprise and with
something of rebuke.

“ You mean ? — 1 do not think I understand you.”

"I mean,*' murmured her sister-in-law almost nervously, “do
not seek for a divorce.”

“ A divorce ! ”

310

MOTUa

Vcve eclioed tlie words in a sort of scorn.

“Yon do not know me much yet,” she said calmly. “The
woman who can wish for a divorce and drag her wrongs into public
— such wrongs ! — is already a wanton herself ; at least I think so.”

Madame N61aguine breathed a little quickly with relief, yet with
a new apprehension.

You are beyond me, Vera, and in your own way you arc
terribly stern.”

“ What do you wish me to be ? ” said Vcre tranquilly. “ If I
wore of softer mould I should make your brother’s name the shame
of Europe. Bo grateful to my coldness; it is his only shield.”

“ But you suffer ”

“ That is nothing to any one. . When I married Prince Zouroff 1
knew very well that I should suffer always. It is not his fault ; he
cannot change his nature.”

His sister stood beside her and pulled the yellow tea-roses
absently.

" You arc altogether beyond me,” she said hurriedly, “ and yet
you are not a forgiving woman, Vera ? ”

“ Forgiveness is a very vague word ; it is used wdth very little
thought. No, I do not forgive, certainly. But I do not avenge
myself by giving my name to the mob, and telling the whole world
tilings that I blush oven to know 1 ”

“ Then you would never separate yourself from Sergius?”

I may leave his roof if he try me too far, I have thought of it ;
but I will never ask the law to set me free from him. What could
the law do for mo? It cannot undo what is clone. A woman who
divurc(‘S her husband is a prostitute legalised by a form ; that is all ”

” You tbiidv fidelity due to the faithless? ”

“ I think fidelity is the only form of chastity left to a woman
who is a wife; the man’s vices cannot affect the question. I abhor
your brother, I could strike him as a brave man strikes a coward,
but I have taken an oath to him and I will be true to it. What
has the law to do with one’s own honour?”

“ It is happy for him that you have such imusnal feeling, said
Madame Nelaguine with a little acrimony, because she herself had
been far from guiltless as a wife. ** But your knight ? your de-
fender? your hero with the golden nightingale in his throat, art
yon as cold to him? Hid you not sec that while he sang his heart
was breaking, and ho would have been glad if his song had been a
sword ? ”

They were imprudent words and she knew it, yet she could not
resist the utterance of them ; for even in her admiration of Vere a
certain bitterness and a certain impatience moved her against a
grandeur of principle that appeared to her strained and out of nature.

^ Vero, who was sitting leaning a little back against' the sea-wall,
raised herself and sat erect ; a warmth of colour came upon her face,
her eyc^grew angered and luminous.

Moma. sii

will not affect to misimdcrstand you,” she said tranquilly,
‘'but you misunderstand both him and me. Long, long ago I
tliink he could have loved me, and I — could have loved him. But
fate had it otherwise. lie is my knight, you say — ^perhaps — ^biit
only as they were knights in the days of old, without hope and
without shame. I think you had no need to say this to me, and,
perhaps, no right to say it.”

The Princess Nadine touched her hand reverently. “ No, I had
no right, Vera. But I thank you for answering mo so. Dear
— you are not of our world. You live in it, but it does not touch
you. Your future is dark, but you bear the lamp of honour in your
hand. We think the light old-fashioned and dull, but it burns in
dark places where we, without it, stumble and fall. Corr^ze did not
sing in vain ; my brother, I think, will say no more to you of the
sables and the Promenade des Anglais.”

“It matters very little whether he -does or no,” said Vere; '‘I
should not drive there, and he knows it. Will you be so good as
not to speak to me again of these things? I think words only make
them harder to bear, and seem to lower one to the level of the
women who complain.”

“ But to speak is so natural ”

“Not to mo.”

It was three o’clock in the December day ; the mistral was
blowing, although in this sheltered nook of the bay of Villafranca
it was but little felt, the sky was overcast, the w%avcs were rolling
in heavy with surf, little boats, going on their way to Saiis Soupir
or k^aint Jean, ploughed through deep waters.

Yore moved towards the house.

Madame Nelaguine went down towards the garden to visit the
young palms she was rearing for the palace in the Newski Prospect,
where heated air was to replace the lost south to them, as tlic fever
of society replaces the dreams of our youth.

Her husband met Vere in the entrance and stopped her there ;
his face w^as reddened and' dark ; his heavy jaw had the look of the
bull-dog’s; his eyes had a furtive and ferocious glance; it was the
first time they had met since she had curtsied to him her good-
night. He barred her way into the entrance chamber,

“ Madame, the horses are ready,” he said curtly, “ go in and
put on your sables.”

She lifted her eyes, and a great contempt spoke in them ; with
her lii)S she was silent.

“ Do you hear me ? ” ho repeated. “ Go in and put on your
sables ; I am waiting to drive with you.”

“ Along the Promenade des Anglais ? ” she said, very calmly.

“On. the Promenade des Anglais,” repeated Zouroff; “do jmu
need twice tilling ? ”

“ Though you tell mo a hundred times, T will not drive there.”

He swore a great oath.

812

MOTHS.

I told you what you were to do last night Last night you
chose to have me insulted by an opera-singer ; do you suppose that
changed my resolve? When I say a thing it is done; go in and
put on your sables.”

“ I will never put them on again ; and I will not drive with
you ! ”

llage held him speechless for a moment. 1'hen he swore a
great oath.

“Go in and put on your sables, or I will teach you how a
liussian can punish rebellion. You insulted me by the mouth of
an ojjera-singer, who had your orders no doubt what to sing. You
shall cat dust to*day ; that I swear.”

Vero gave a little gesture of disdain.

“Do you think you can terrify mo?” she said tranquilly.
“ VVehad better not begin to measure insults. My account against
you is too heavy to be evenly balanced on that score.”

The calmness of her tone and of her attitude lashed him to
fury.

“By God! I will beat you as my fjither did his serfs I” he
muttered savagely, as ho seized her by the arm.

“ You can do so if you choose. The Tsar has not enfranchised
me. But make me drive as you say, where you say, that is beyond
your power.”

She stood facing him on the terrace ; the angry sea and clouded
sky beyond her. Iler simple dignity of attitude impressed him for
an instant with shame and with respect; but his soul was set on
enforcing his command. She had had him humiliated by the
mouth of a singer ; and he was resolved to avenge the humiliation ;
and having said this thing, though he was ashamed of it, ho would
not yield nor change.

He pulled her towards him by both hands, and made her stand
before him.

“You shall learn all that my power means, madame. I am
your master ; do you deny me obedience ? ”

“ In things that are right, no.”

“ Right — wrong I What imbecile’s words are those ? I bid
you do what 1 choose. You insulted me by your singer’s mouth
last night ; I will make you eat dust to-day.”

Yerc looked him full in the face.

“ I said wo had better not meyasure insults ; I have had too
many to count them, but at last they may pass one’s patience —
yours has passed mine.”

“ Body of Christ 1 ” he cried savagely, what were you ? Did I
not buy you ? What better arc you than that other vroman who
has my sables except that I bought you at a higher cost? Have
you never thought of that ? You high-born virgins who are offered
up for gold, how are you so much nobler and higher than the JoUes
impures Avhom you pretend to despise ? ”

I

MOi^JTS. 313

I have thought of it every day and night since I was made
your wife. But you know very well that 1 did not marry you for
either rank or riches, neither for any purpose of my own.”

** No ? For what did you, then ? ”

Yere’s voice sank very low, so low that the sound of the sea
almost drowned it.

To save my mother— you know that.”

The face of her husband changed, and he let go his hold of her
wrists.

“What did she teU you?” he muttered; “ what did she tell
you ? ”

“ She told me she was in your debt ; that she could not pay
you ; that you had letters of hers to some one — she did not say to
whom — that placed her in your power ; and you had threatened to
use your power unless I — But you must know all that very well ;
better tlian I do. It seemed to me right to sacrifice myself ; now 1
would not do it ; but then I was such a child, and she prayed to
me in my father's name ”

She paused suddenly, for Zouroff laughed aloud; a terrible
jiirring laugh that seemed to hurt the peace and silence around.

“ What a liar ! what a liar always 1 ” he muttered, “ and with it
all how pretty, and empty-headed, and harmless she looks — ^my
Lady Dolly!”

Then he laughed again.

“ Was it not true ? ” said Tore.

A great cold and a gi’eat sickness came over her : the look upon
her husband’s face frightened her as his rage had had no power
to do.

“ True ? was what true ? ”

“ That she was in your power ? ”

Ilis eyes did not meet hers.

“ Yes — no. She had had plenty of my money, but that was no
matter,” he answered her in a strange forced voice, “ she — she had
paid me ; there was no cailse to frighten you, to coerce you.”

Then he laughed again — a dissonant cruel laugh, that hurt his
wife more than the bruise he had left upon her wrists.

“ Was it not true ? ” she muttered again wearily ; she trembled
a little.

“ Be quiet ! ” said her husband roughly, with the colour passing
over his face again like a hot wind, “do not talk of it; do not
think of it ; she wished you to marry me, and she was — well, in a
sense she was afraid, and wished to muzzle me. Ah I those dainty
ladies! and they think to meet the lionnes in the Passage dcs
Anglais is pollution ! ”

Then he laughed yet again.

Vere fellj^ a faintness steal over her, she felt terror — ^she knew
not of what nor why.

“ Then my mother deceived me ! ”

iu MOfSiS.

His eyes looked at ker strangely in a fleeting glance.

“ Yes, she deceived you I he said briefly. '“In a sense she
was afraid of me ; but not so — not so.”

His dark brows frowned, and his face grew very troubled and
full of a dusky red of shame. Vere was mute.

“ It is of no use speaking of it now ; your mother never could
be true to any one,” he said, with an effort. “ I am — sorry. You
were misled — but it is of no use now — it is too late. Give the
sables to the first beggar you meet. That damned singer was right
last night; you are a cup of gold and I — like best the trough
where the swine drink I ”

Vere stood motionless and mute, a vague terror of some un-
known thing unnerved her and paralysed her dauntless courage, her
proud tranquillity ; she felt that for her mother this man who was
before^her had a scorn as boundless as any he could feel for the
basest creatures of the world : and for once she was a coward, foi
once she dared not ask the truth.

Zouroff stood still a moment, looked at her wistfully, then
bowed to her with deep respect, and turned away in silence. ^ A
little while later he was driving rapidly through Eza to the Casino
of Monte Carlo.

His sister came to Vere anxiously as she saw his horses drive
away.

“ I ho])o he was not violent, my dear ? ”

“ No.”

“ And he did not speak of your driving on that road ? ”

“ IJc did not enforce it.”

A^ere spoke feebly, her teeth chattered a little as with cold ; she
had sat down by the balustrade of the terrace, and had a stupefied
look like the look of some one who has had a blow or fall.

“ I am thankful my children died at their birth,” slie said after
some moments, in a voice so low that it scarcely stirred the air.

Then she got ixp, drew a shawl about her, and went once more
towards the house ; a great darknc.ss was upon her ; she felt as in
the Greek tragedies which she had read in her cliildhood, those
felt who were pursued, innocent, yet doomed hy the Furies for
their mothers’ sins.-

Meanwhile, her husband was driving against the hot south-east
wind across the Place du Palais of Monaco.

He was thinking — “ the quadroon is a henst of prey, hut she
is honesty itself beside half the women in society, the delicate
dainty dames that we flirt with in the hall-room alcoves, and lift
our hats to as they go by in the parks I ”

A little while later he went up the steps of the great temple of
Hazard. He met the mother of Vere coming out hetyeen the
columns from the vestibule ; it was sunset, she had been playing
since three o’clock and had amused herself, she had won a thousand
francs or so ; she was going home to dinner contented and diverted.

MOTES.

316

She was still staying with her friends at the villa of the Conda-
mine. She looked like a little Dresden figure, she had a good deal
of pale rose and golden brown in her dress, she had a knot of pink
roses in her hand, and had above her head a large pink sunshade.
Cassonne-Crofite had been playing very near her at the table, but
Lady Dolly did not mind these accidents, she was not supposed to
know Casse-une-Crofitc by sight from any other unrecognisable
person amongst the pilgrims of pleasure.

“The ponies are waiting for you, madame,” said her son-in-law
as he met her, and took her from her little attendant group of
3 ^oung men, and sauntered on by her side down by the marble
stairs.

There was a gorgeous sunset over sea and sky, the thickets of
camellias were all in gorgeous blossom, the odorous trees and shrubs
filled the air with perfume, some music of Ambroise Thomas was
floating on the air in sweet distant strains, throngs of gay people
were passing up and down ; the gi'cat glittering pile rose above
them like a tem23le of Moorish art.

“I have won a thousand francs, quel lonheurV^ cried Lady
Dolly.

“ Quel honlieur ! repeated Zouroff ; “ I su 2 )poso that sunshade
did not cost much more ? ”

“Not half as much,” said Lady Dolly seriously ; “ these stones
in the handle are only Ceylon garnets.”

Zouroff did not look at her, his face was 11 mshed and gloomy.
JIc turned a little aside at the foot of the steps into one of the
winding walks and motioned to a niarhlc bencli : “ Will you sit
tliorc a moment? the ponies can wait; 1 want to say a word to you
that is better said here.”

Lady Dolly imt her bouquet of roses to her lips and felt
annoyed. “When pcoido want to speak to one, it is never to say
anything agreeiiblc,” she thought to herself, “and he looks an.iry ;
l)erhaps it is because that, Cassc-une-Croute was at my elbow — but
1 shall not say anything to Vere, I never make mischief; he must
surely know that.”

“Why did you induce your daughter to marry me by false
rci^resentations ? ” said Zouroff abruptly.

“ False what ? ” echoed Lady Dolly vaguely.

“ You deceived me and you deceived her,” said Zouroff. — Lady
Dolly laughed nervously. •

“ Deceived ! what a very low hysterical sort of word ; and what
nonsense I ”

“You deceived her,” he repeated, “and you cannot deny it;
you told her nothing of the truth.”

“ TLp truth ? ” said Lady Dolly, growing very pale and with
a nervous Contraction at the end corners of her mouth. “ Who
ever does tell the truth ? I don’t know anybody ”

** Of course you could not tell it her,” said Zouroff, who also

S16 MOTHS.

had grown pale, " but you forced her to your purpose with a lie—
that was perliaps worse. You kuew very well that I would not
have had her driven to me so ; you knew very well that I supposed
her bought by ambition like any other ; you did a vile thing ”

“ You turned preacher ! ” said Lady Dolly, with a little shrill
angry laugh ; ** that is really too funny, and you are speaking not
too politely. You sought Vere’s hand, I gave it you ; I really do
not know ”

“But I never bid you force her to me by a lie! You never
feared me — you — you were no more in fear of me than of half a
score of others; besides, you know very well that no man who
is not a cur ever speaks

“I was afraid; I thought you would be furious unless she
married you ; when men are angiy then they speak ; how could I
tell y 'You wished that thing, you had it ; you are very ungrateful,
and she too.”

Lady Dolly had recovered herself; she had regained that
effrontery which was her equivalent for courage; she had no
conscience, and she did not see that she had done so much that
was wrong. After all, what was a sin ? — it was an idea. In her
way she was very daring. She would kneel at the flower-services
and weep at the Lenten ones, but she did not believe a word of all
her prayers and penance ; they looked well, so she did them ; that
was all.

For the moment she had been frightened, but she was no longer
fi’ightcncd. What could he do, what could ho say ? When slie
could not be punished for it, guilt of any sort lay very lightly on
her head. She knew that he was powerless, and she lost the fear
with which the strong rough temper of Sergius Zouroff had often
really moved her in an earlier time.

The contraction at the corners of her mouth still remained and
quivered a little, but she recovered all her coolness and all that
petulant impudence which was perhaps the most serviceable of all
her qualities.

“ You are very rude,” she said, “ and you are very thankless.
You are a very faithless husband, and I know everything and 1 say
nothing, and I come and stay in your house and you ought to
thank me — ^yes, you ought to thank me. I do not know what you
mean when you say I used force with my daughter; you could
see very well she detested you and yet you chose to insist ; whose
fault was that ? You have been generous, I do not deny that, but
then you are just as much so to creatures — ^more so 1 I think you
have spoken to me abominably; I am not used to that sort ot
language, I do not like being rebuked when I have always actec
for the best if the results did not repay me my sacrifices. As for
your imagining I wanted so very much to marry Veto to you, 1
can assure you I need not have done so ; I could have married her
at that very same time to Jura if I had chosen.”

m

MOTES. 317

“ To Jura?”*

ZourolF looked at lier, then burst into bitter laughter that was
more savage than any of his oaths.

“ You arc an extraordinary woman ! ” he said with a little short
laugh.

“ I don’t know why you should say that,” said Lady Dolly,
“ I don’t know why you should say that ; I am sure I am exactly
like everybody else ; I hate singularity, there is nothing on cartli
so vulgar; I do not know whatever 1 have done to deserve the insult
of being called ‘ cxtraoi dinary.’ 1 hate people who drive at
things. I always detest conundrums and acrostics, peihaps I am
too stupid for them ; I wo\dd rather be stupid than extraordinary,
it is less voyant,**

He stared down on her gloomily for awhile, while the, laugh
rattled in his throat with a cynical sound that hurt her nerves.

“You are a wonderful woman, Miladi, I never did you justice,
T see/’ he said curtly ; “ Zola will want a lower deep before long,
I suppose; he will do well to leave his cellars for the drawing-
rooms.”

“What do you mean?” said Lady Dolly, opening innocent
eyes of surprise.

Zouroff paced slowly by her side; he was silent for some
moments, then he said abruptly —

“ Pard(m me if I do not ask you to return to my house, you
and your daughter should not be sheltered by the same roof.”

Lady Dolly’s pretty teeth gnawed her under lip to keep in her
fury ; she could not rebuke, and she dared not resent it.

“We had better not quarrel,” she said feebly, “peoj)le would
talk so terribly.”

“ Of course wo will not quarrel,” said her son-in-law with his
cynical smile ; “whoever does quarrel in our world? Only — you
understand that I mean what I say.”

“ I am sure I understand nothing that you mean to-day,” said
Lady Dolly, with a little feeble, flitting laugh.

Then in unbroken silence they went to where the ponies
waited.

“ You are too cruel to us not to return,” said Zouroff publicly,
for the sake of the world’s wide-open cars, as she went to her
carriage on his arm.

“ i cannot stand your miStral^* said Lady Dolly, also for the
world, and, in his ear, added with an injured sweetness, “ and I do
not like reproaches, and I never deserve tliem.”

Lady Dolly drove home to La Condaminc, where she was staying
with the Marquise Pichegru, and, when she was all alone behind
the pon\es„ shuddered a little, and turned sick, and felt for a
moment as if the leaden hand of a dark guilt lay on her conscience ;
her nerves had been shaken, thCugh she had kept so calm a front,
so cool a smile; she had been a coward, ^ud slie had saci;ificed the

!18

MOTEB.

child of her dead husband because in her cowardfeo she had feared
the resurrection to her hurt of her own bygone sins, but she had
never thought of herself as a wicked woman. In her frothy world
there is no such thing as wickedness, there is only exposure ; and
the dread of it, which passes for virtue.

She lived, like all women of her stamp and her epoch, in an
atmosphere of sugared sophisms ; she never rellectcd, she never
admitted, that she did wrong ; in her world nothing mattered much
unless, indeed, it were found out, and got into the public mouth.

Shifting as the sands, shallow as the rain-pools, drifting in all
danger to a lie, incapable of loyalty, insatiably curious, still as a
friend and ill as a foe, kissing like Judas, denying like Peter,
impure of thought, even where by physical bias or politic prudence,
still pure in act, the woman of modern society is too often at once
the feeblest and the foulest outcome of a false civilisation. Useless
as a butterfly, corruj't as a canker, untrue to even lovers and
friends because mentally incapable of comprehending what truth
means, caring only for physical comfort and mental inclination,
tired of living, but afraid of dying ; believing some in priests, and
some in physiologists, hut none at all in virtue ; sent to sleep by
chloral, kept awake by strong waters and raw meat; bored at
twenty, and exhausted at thirty, yet dying in tlic harness of
pleasure rather than droj) out of the race and live naturally;
pricking their sated senses with the s])ur of lust, and fancying
it love; taking their passions as they take absinthe before dinner;
fiilse in everytliing, from the swell of their breast to the curls at
their throat ; — beside them the guilty and tragic figures of old, the
Medea, the Clytomnajstra, the Phasdra, look almost pure, seem
almost noble.

When one thinks that they are the only shape of womanhood
that comes hourly before so many men, one comprehends why the
old Christianity which made womanhood sacred dies out day by
day, and why the new Positivism, which would make her divine,
can find no lasting root.

The faith of men can only live by the imrity of women, and
there is both impurity and feebleness at the core of the dolls of
Worth, as the canker of the red phylloxera works at the root of
the vine.

But there is “ no harm” in them„ that is the formula of society;
there is “ no hann ” in them ; they have never been found out, and
they are altogether unconscious of any guilt.

They believe they have a conscience as they know they have a
liver, but the liver troubles them sometimes; the conscience is
only a word.

Lady Dolly had been a very guilty woman, buf; &^e never
thought so. Perhaps in real truth the shallow-hearted are never
really guilty. " They know not what they do ” is a ])lea of mercy
which thjy perchance desr.rve even no less than they need it.

MOTHS.

319

A day or two"" later she made some excuse, and left tlio lliviera.

“After all,’* she tliouglit to herself as the train ran into the
heart of the rocks, and the palm trees of Monte Carlo ceased to
lift their plumes against the sky, “after all it was quite true what
1 did tell her ; I used to bo horribly afraid of him, he can be such
a brute. I never was really at ease till I saw my letters on the
back of the fire ; he can sulk, he can rage, he can quarrel with me
if ha choose, but he never can do me any harm, Jf he be ever
so unpleasant about me, people will only laugh and say that a man
always hates his wife’s mother, and I really am Vere’s mother, odd
as it seems: I Ihink I look quite as young as she docs ; it is such
a mistake, she will never paint, she puts ten years on to herself.”

Then she took the little glass out of her travelling-bag, and
looked at her face; it was pi city, wdth soft curls touching the
eyebrows under a black saucer of a hat with golden-coloured
feathers ; she had a yellow rr)se at her throat, linked into her
racoon fur; she was satisfied witli what she saw in the mirror;
when she got into her train she found a charming young man that
she knew a little going the same way, and she gave him a seat in
her coupe, and flirted pleasantly all the way to Lyons.

“ What a mistake it is to take life au grand serieuXf* she
thought; “now if poor Vere were not so tragic, I think she might
be the happiest woman in the world — still.”

But then Vere could not have flirted with a chance young man
in a coupd, and given him a yellow rose witli the whisper of a half-
promised rendezvous as they parted ; those are the capabilities that
make happy women.

CHAPTER XXIII.

In the house on the Gulf of Saint-Hospice a heavy gloom reigned
Life ran the same course as usual, society c.amo and went
people laughed and talked, guests were gathered and were dispersed ,
but there 'was a shadow in the house that even the ceremonies ana
frivolities of daily custom could not altogether hide or dissipate.
Sergius ZourolT was taciturn and quarrelsome, and it taxed all the
resources of his sister’s tact and* wit and worldly wisdom to repair
the harm and cover l-he constraint produced by his captious and
moody discourtesies. To his wife he said nothing.

Except the conventional phrase that society in the presence of
servants necessitated, Zouroff preserved an unbroken silence to
her ; he v*;as^ gloomy but taciturn, now and then under his bent
brows his eyes watched her furtively. This forbearance was only
a lull in the storm, such a peace as came over the gulf beneath
her windows after storm, when the waves sank for an hour «it noon

MOTES.

320

to rise iu redoubled fury and send tlie breakers -over the quay at
sunrise. As for her, the golden cup was now full, but was full
with tears.

Would she have had it empty ?

She was not sure.

The echo of that one song seemed always on her ear ; in the
dreams of her troubled sleep she murmured its words ; the singer
seemed to her transfigured, as to a woman bound in martyrdom,
in days of old, seemed the saint with sword and palm that rode
tiirough fiery heats and living walls of steels to release her from
the stake or wheel. ‘‘The woman in Calvados called him the
Angel Kaphael,” she thought with dim eyes.

It was still midwinter when Sergius Zouroff, several wcel^s
before his usual time, abruptly left the villa of Villafranca, and
went with his wife and sister to his hotel in Paris. Zouroff had
taken a hitter hatred to this place where the only reproof he hail
ever endured, the only challenge he had ever received, had been
cast at him publicly and in suchwisc that he could not resent nor
avenge it. When ho drove through the streets of Monaco or the
streets of Nice, he thought he saw on every face a laugh ; when
he was saluted by his numerous acquaintances ho heard in tlie
simplest greeting a sound of ridicule ; when a song was hummed in
tho open air he fancied it was the song of the Coupe d’Or. In im-
patience and anger ho took his household to Paris.

A great emotion, a sort of fear, came upon Yero as she once
more saw the walls of her house in Paris.

For in Paris was Corr^zo.

To the honour and loyalty of her soul it seemed to her that she
ought never to see his face or hear his voice again. She would have
bc(in willing could she have chosen to have gone far away from all
the luxuries and homage of the world, to be buried in humility and
ol)Scurity, labouring for God and man, and bearing always in her
memory that song which had been raised like a sword in her
defence.

When at the end of the long cold journey — ^long and cold, despite
all that wealth could do to abridge, and luxury to rob it of its
terrors — she saw the pale January light of a Paris morning shine
on the “ Slave ** of Gerome in her bedchamber, on the table beneath
the picture was a great bouquet of roses ; with the roses was a little
sprig of sweetbriar.

To be in leaf in the winter she knew that the little homely
cottage plant must have had the care of hothouse science. She did
not need to ask who had sent her that welcome once more.

She bent her face down on the roses and her eyes were wet.
Then she put them away and fell on her knees and p^jayged tho old
simple prayer — simple and homely as the sweetbriar — to be.delivercd
from evil.

At ^he same time hoy husband, who had driven not to his own

MOTHS.

321

house but straight to the Faubourg St. Germain, was standing
amidst the gay chinoiseries of the Duchesse Jeanne’s famous bou-
doir. The Duchesse was laughing and screaming ; he was looking
down with bent brows.

“ Oh, can you think for a moment the story is not known to all
Paris ! ” she was crying. “ HoW could you— how could you — willi
•a hundred ])eop]e there to hear? My dear, it was only 1 wlio kept
it out of * Figaro ’ 1 Such a lovely story as it was, and of course
they made it still better. My dear, how stupid you are, blind as a
bat, as a mole ! To be sure we are all dying now to sco the first
signs of your conversion. IIow will you begin? Will you go to
church, will you drive your mother-in-law round the lake, will you
take au oath never to enter a cafe? Do tell mo how you mean to
begin your reformation? It will be the drollest thing of the year I

“ II vous flait de flaimnUv^^ said her visitor stiffly, between
bis shut teeth.

When he left the Hotel do Sonnaz, the half-formed resolution
which he had made to be less unworthy of his wife had faded away ;
he felt galled, stung, infuriated, Casse-uiio-Croutc, and the other
companions of his licentious hours, found him sullen, fierce, moody.
When they rallied him he turned on them savagely, and made them
feel that, though he had chosen to toy with them and let them
stuff themselves with his gold, he was their master and their pur-
chaser — a tyrant that it was dangerous to beard, a lion with whom
it was death to play.

There was strength in his character, though it had been waste* 1
in excesses of all kinds and in a life of utter selfislmcss and self-
indulgence ; an^ this strength left in him a certain manliness that
even liis modes of life and all his base habits could not utterly
destroy ; and that latent manliness made him yield a sullen rosps ot
to the courageousness and unselfishness of the woman who was his
wife and his princess before the world, but in fact had been the
victim of his tyrannies and the martyr of his lusts,

I’ll ere were times when he would have liked to say to her.
“ forgive me, and pray for me.” But his pride withheld him, and
his cynical temper made him sneer at himself. He dreaded ridicule.
It was the only dread that was on him. He could not endiirq^tliat
his world should laugh ; so, uniting more display and effrontery
than ever, ho paraded his vices before that world, and all the while
hated the panderers to them •and the associates of them, lie
thought if he lived more decently, that the whole of Europe would
make a mock of it, and say that he had been reformed by the rclmkes
of Corr^ze. So he showed himself abroad with the verres epais d\t.
cabaret brutal ^ though they grew loathsome to him, and revenged
himself on them by crushing their coarse frail worthlessness with
savage ha^shliess.

Vere could not toll the strange sort of remorse which moved him.
She saw herself daily and hourly insultc«^. and bore it as glic had

Y

322

MOTHS.

done before. So long as ho asked no public degradation of herself,
like that which he had commanded on the Promenade dcs Anglais,
she was passive and content, with that joyless and mournful con-
tentment which is merely the absence of greater evils.

Although they only met in society there was a sort of timidity
in the manner of Sergius Zouroff to his wife, a gentleness and a
homage in his tone when he addressed her. Vcrc, who shrank from
him rather more than less, did not perceive it, but all others did.
“Will Zouroff end with being in love with his wile?” his friends
said, with a laugh. The Duchesse Jeanne heard it said on all sides
of her. “Will he be a good husband after all?” she thought
angrily ; and her vanity rose in alarm like the quills of the bruised
porcupine.

She attempted a jest or two with him, but they fell flat ; there
came an anxious sparkle in his gloomy eyes that warned her off
such witticisms. She was ' perplexed and irritated. “After all, it
will bo very diverting if you should end as le mart amoureitx ? ” she
could not resist saying at hazard one day. Zouroff looked down,
and his face was very grave.

“ Let me alone. I can be dangerous ; you know that. No, I
am not in love with my wife ; one is not in love with marble, how-
ever beautiful the lines of it. But I respect her. It is very odd
for me to feel respect for any woman. It is new to me.”

“It is a very creditable emotion,” said the Duchesse, with a
little sneer. “ But it is rather a dull sentimeut, is it not ? ”

“ Perhaps,” said Zouroff*, gloomily.

A sort of uneasiness and anxiety was upon him. Something
of tho feeling that had touched him for the child Vere at Pelicitd
moved him once more before his wife ; not passion in any way, but
more nearly tenderness than it had ever been in his nature to feel
for any living thing. He had always thought that he had bought
her as he had bought the others, only par le chemin de la cliapetle,
and he had had a scorn for her that had spoiled and marred his
thoughts of her. Now that he knew her to be the martyr of her
mother’s schemes, a pity that was full of honour rose up in him.
After all, she was so innocent herself, and he had hurt her so
grossly; hurt her with an injury that neither sophistry nor gold
could make the less.

He was a coarse and brutal man ; he had had his own will from
childhood upon men and women, slaves and animals. lie was cruel
with the unthinking, unmeasured cruelty of long self-indulgence ;
hut ho was a gentleman in certain instincts, despite all, and the
manhood in him made him feel a traitor before Vero. A kind of
reverence that was almost fear came into him before her ; he seemed
to himself unworthy to cross the threshold of her room.

The leopard cannot change his spots, nor the Ethiopijfq his skin,
nor could he abandon habits and vices engrained in all the fibre of
his being ; but ho began Jbo feel himself as unfit for his wife’s young

Moma.

323

life as a murderer ,to touch the Eucharist. She could not imagine
anything of th^^tLaughts and the remorse that moved him. She
only saw that he^ft her alone and ceased to vent his tyrannies
upon her. She was thankful. The hours and the weeks that
])assed without her seeing him were the most peaceful days of her
life. When he addressed her with gentleness she was alarmed, she
was more afraid of caresses than of his curses. Ho saw this fear in
her, and a vague half-sullen sadness began to enter into him. Ho
began to understand that he owned this woman body and soul, and
yet was further from her than any other creature, because no other
had outraged her so deeply as he had done.

He was a man who heeded his sins not at all, and oven of crime
thought little. He had the absolute disbelief and the profound
moral indilfcrcnce of his century ; but his offences agamst Vere he
had been made to feel, and it rendered him in her presence also
timid, and in her absence almost faithful. Ho had gathered the
edelweiss and he knew that his love was only fit for the brambles
and poison-berries.

The season passed away wearily to Vere; an intense pain and
a vague terror were always with her. She went out into the world
as usual, but it scorned to her more than ever the most monotonous,
as it was the most costly, way of destroying time. She was in her
tribune at Chantilly, in her caiTiage in the llois, in her diamonds at
Embassies, and she received that homage which a woman of her
loveliness and her position is always surrounded by, however in-
different be her mood or unwilling her car.

But the whole life scorned to her more than ever a disease, a
fever, a strained and unwholesome folly. She strove more and more
to escape from it and from herself by labour amidst the poor and
tenderness for them.

“You should bo canonized, Vera! ” said her sister-in-law to her,
with a little cynical impatience; to her brother, Madame Nelaguine
said with moist eyes —

“ Sergius, one day you will see the red and white roses of
Paradise in your wife’s lap as her husband did in S. Elizabeth's.”

Zouroff was silent.

“ Alas ! alas ! the age of miracles is past,” thought his sister.
“ Good works bring their own fruits, to those capable of them, in
peace of mind and innocence of soul, that I believe ; but the world
has ceased to adore ; the very^iests have ceased to believe ; the
ways of sin are not death but triumph ; and the poor do not lov(5
the hand that feeds them ; they snatch and tear, then snarl and
bite, like a street cur. Alas 1 alas ! ou sont les 7iei^es (Vanfan ! ”

Meanwhile her mother Vere did not see at that time. She was
thankful.

Lady*I>5lly was one of the five hundred leaders of Ihiglish
society, and could not leave her duties. She was more j^opular than
ever before. Her balls were the prettiest of the year, and people

324

MOins.

could Lri atlic at them ; she was exclusive yet always amiable ; she
knew how to unite a social severity with a charming good-nature ;
she began to call herself old with the merriest little laugh in the
world, and she began to doubt whether she still ought to dance.
" A dear little woman," said the world ; and every one pitied her fur
having a daughter who was cold, who was austere, and who had so
little alieclion for her,

“My Vcre docs not love me. It comes from my own fault, no
doubt, in letting her bo away from me in her childhood,” said Lady
Dolly softly, to her intimate friends; and her eyes were dim and
her voice pathetic.

There were only two persons who did not believe in her in all
her London world. These were a rough, gloomy, yet good-natured
man, who was no longer Lord Jura, but Lord Shetland ; and Fuschia,
Duchess of Mull.

“ Guess she's all molasses,” said her Grace, who in moments of
ease returned to her vernacular, “ but my word ! ain’t there wasps
at the bottom.”

“ After all, poor little Pussie is not the siihpleton I thought her,”
mused Lady Stoat of Stitchley, with a sigh of envy, for her own
unerring wisdom and exquisite tact and prudence had not been able
to avert exposure and scandal from her own daugliter, who was
living with a French actor in Italy, while Lord Berkhampstcad was
drinlcing himself to death on brandy.

A few days after their arrival, Corroze had left Paris. For the
first time in his life he had refused to play in Paris on his arrival
from the south, and had signed a four months' engagement with
Vienna and Berlin. “ They will say you are afraid to meet Prince
Zouroff,” said an old friend to him. “They may say it if they
l)lcase,'' answered Corroze, wearily, and with a movement of disdain.

He knew that his indignation and his disgust had carried him
into an imprudence, an imprudence that he regretted now that the
story of “ La Coupe d'Or ” had flown through society, regretted it
lest it should annoy or comi)romise her ; and for her sake he would
not stay where she was.

He knew how the tongues of the world wagged with or without
reason at a mere whisper, and ho know that there were so many
who would rejoice to see the pure, cold, snow-white purity of Vore's
name fall into the mud of calumny ; rejoice out of sheer waiitoii-
ness, mere purposeless malice, mere i«vc of a new sensation. “ Blessed
arc the pure of spirit,” says the Evangelist, but society says it
not with him.

He loved her ; but it was an emotion no more akin to the noble,
tender, and self-denying love of other days than to the shallow sen-
sualities of his own.

He had been satiated with intrigue, surfeited with flassion ; un-
derlying the capriciousness of a popular idol, and the ardour of an
amorous temper, there were the patience and the loyalty of the

MOTHS.

325

mountainccr^s hcaft in him. Whosoever has truly loved the Alpine
hcii];hts in early youth, keeps something of their force and some-
thing of their freshness and their chastity in his soul always. Cor-
reze was an artist and a man of the world ; but he had been first
and was still, under all else, a child of nature ; and he would utterly
deny that nature was the foul thing that it is now painted by those
who call themselves realists. He denied that a drunkard and a pros-
tilute arc all who are real in the world.

“ When tnc soldier dies at his post, unhonoured and unpitied,
and out of sheer duty, is that unreal because it is noble?” he said
one night to his companions, “When the sister of charity hkh^s
her youth and her sex under a grey shroud, and gives up her whole
lil'e to woe and solitude, to sickness and pain, is that unreal because
it is Avondorful ? A man paints a spluttering candle, a greasy cloth,
a mouldy cheese, a pewter can ; ‘ how real ! * they cry. If he paint
tbe spirituality of dawn, the light of the summer sea, the flame of
ai'ctic nights, of tro])ic woods, they arc called unreal, though they
exist no less than the candle and the cloth, the cheese and the can.
Buy Bias is iioav condemned as unreal because the lovers kill them-
selves; the realists forget that there are lovers still to whom that
death Avould be possible, would be preferable, to low intrigue and
yet more lowering falsehood. They can only sec the mouldy cheese,
they cannot see the sunrise glory. All that is heroic, all that is
sublime, impersonal, or glorious, is derided as unreal. It is a dreary
creed. It will make a dreary world. Is not my Venetian glass witli
its iridescent hues of opal as real every whit as your pot of pewter ?
Yet the time is coming Avhen every one, morally and mentally at
least, will bo allowed no other than a pewter pot to drink out of,
under pain of being ‘ writ down an ass ' — or worse. It is a dreary
prospect.”

And he would not bo content with it. "There were the Buy Bias
and the Borneo in him as there are in all men who arc at once im-
aginative and ardent. He had the lover in him of southern lands,
of older days. Ho would watch in long hours of cold midnight
merely to sec her image go by him ; he would go down to the cliff
on the northern coast only to gather a spray of sweetbriar on the
spot where he had seen her first ; he would row in rough seas at dark
under her villa wall in the south for the sake of watching the light
in her casement; his love for her was a religion with him, simple,
intense, and noble ; it Avas an ifnending suffering, but it was a suf-
fl'i’ing he loved better than all his previous joys. When he saw her
husband in haunts of vicious pleasure, he could have strangled him
for very shame that ho Avas not worthier of her. When he saw him
beside the dusky face of the quadroon, he could have dragged him
from his carriage and hurled him under the feet of the wife he out-
raged. . * "

In one of the few days before his departure he passed Sergius
Zoiiroff on the Boulevard des Italiens. Corrreze stood still toJ.et him

326

M0T1I8.

speak if he would. Zourolf looked away and walked onward with-
out any sign, except of anger, from the sudden sullen gleam in his
half-shut eyes.

The arrogance of a man whose birth was higher, because his race
had been greater, than the Romanoffs*, made it impossible for him
to imagine that Correzo could be his enemy or his rival.

He thought the singer had only sung what had been commanded
him. He thought the rebuke to him had been his wife’s, and Oor-
reze only its mouthpiece.

Still he hated him ; he avoided him ; he would have liked to
wring the throat of that silver-voiced nightingale.

Correze suffered bitterly to do nothing, to go away, to go as if
he were a coward ; yet he did it lest the world should si^eak of her
— the light and cruel world to which nothing is sacred, which makes
a joke of man’s dishonour and a jest of woman’s pain.

He did it, and went and sang in the cities of the north with an
aching heart. This is always the doom of the artist : the world has
no pity. Its children must not pause to weep nor go aside to pray.
’Jdicy must be always in the front, always exerting all their force and
all their skill before their public, or they pass from remembrance and
perish. The artist, when he loves, has two mistresses, each as in-
exorable as the other.

Correze could not abandon his art; would not abandon it
more than a yearling child will leave its mother. It was all he had.
It w'as a delight to him, that empire of sound which came of a per-
fect mastery, that consciousness and clearness of genius. AVithont
the listening crowds, the glittering houses, the nights of triumph,
he might have been only dull and lonely ; but without the delight
of melody, the command of that song which had gone with him all
his life, as a nightingale’s goes with it till it dies, ho would have
been desolate.

Therefore in the keen cold of the northern winter and their tardy,
niggard spring, he sang, as the nightingale sings, even while its lover
lies shot under the leaves; and the multitudes and their leaders
alike adored him. In Vienna the whole city saluted him as it salutes
its Kaiser, and in the vast barrack of Berlin the blare of trumpets
and the clash of arms were forgotten for one soft voice that sang
under Gretchen’s cottage-window.

“ After all, when one has known this, one has known human
greatness surely,” he thought wistfully, as he stood on his balcony
in the keen starlight of northern skies, and saw vast throngs fill the
square beneath him and all the streets around, and heard the mighty
hochf that northern lungs give for their emperors and their armies,
ring through the frosty air for him.

Yet a mist came over his eyes that obscured the tQrch-glare and
the gathered multitudes, and the buildings that were so' white and
so vast in the moonlight. He thought that he would have given
all his, triumphs, all his joys— nay, his very voice itself— to undo

M0TII8. 327

tlie tniug tliat bad been done, and make the wife of Sergius Zou-
roff once more the child by the sweetbriar hedge on the cliff.

Though for all the world he was a magician, he had no sorcery
fur himself. He was but a man, like all the others, and to himself
he seemed weaker than all the rest. The bonds of the world bound
him — the bonds of its conventions, of its calumnies, of its common-
places. He could not strike a blow for her honour that the world
would not construe to her shame.

“ And who knows but that if she knew that I loved her, she too
might never forgive,” he thought wearily ; and the flowers flung to
him through the frost seemed but weeds, the multitude fools, the
rejoicing city a madhouse.

When Fame stands by us all alone, she is an angel clad in light
and strength ; but when Love touches her she drops her sword, and
fades away, ghostlike and asliamed.

His sacrifice was of little use. There were too many women
jealous of him, and envious of her, for the story of the Ooujie d' Or
not to bo made the root and centre of a million falsehoods.

You may weep your eyes blind, you may shout your throat dry,
you may deafen the cars of your world for half a lifetime, and you
may never get a truth believed in, never have a simple fact accre-
dited. But the lie flics like the swallow, multiplies itself like the
caterpillar, is accepted everywhere, like the visits of a king ; it is
a royal guest lor whom the gates fly open, the red carpet is un-
rolled, the trumpets sound, thccro^vds applaud.

Jeanne de Soiinaz laughed a little, shrugged her shoulders, then
said very prettily that every one knew there was nothing ; Verc was
a saint. And then the thing was done.

Who said it first of all no one ever knew. Who ever secs the
snake-spawn, the })lague-mist gather? The snake-brood grows
and comes out into the light, the plague-mist spreads and slays its
thousands — that is enough to see.

Who first whispered through the great world the names of the
Princess Zouroff and the singer Correze together ? No one could
have told. All in a moment it seemed as if every one in society were
mmunuring, hinting, smiling, with that damnable smile with which
the world always greets the approach of a foul idea.

A cruel story runs on wheels, and every hand oils the wheels as
they run.

“ An old love, an early lowc,” so they muttered ; and the fans
and the cigarettes made little breaks and waves in the air, as much
as to say it was always so. You could say what you liked — they
murmured — when people were so very cold, so very proud, so very
proper, there was always some cause. An old love — ah ? that was
why she was so fond of music 1 Then society laughed ; its inane
cruel chkpi*ng laughter, when it smells a sin.

She had many foes. When those calm, deep, disdainful eyes had
looked through the souls of others, those other souls — so often mean

328

MOTHS.

and shameless with paltry lusts or swollen with paltry forms of pride
— lind shrunk under that glance, and hated the one who all inno-
cently gave it ; when her serene simplicity and her grave grace had
made the women around her look merely dolls of the Palais Iloyal
toyshops, and the fantastic frivolity of her epoch seem the silliest
and rankest growth of an age in nothing over wise — then, and for
thiit alone, she had become beset by enemies unseen and unsus-
pected, but none the less perilous for their secresy. When women
iiad called her farouche in their drawing-room jargon, they had only
meant tliat slic was chaste, that she was grave, that folly did not
charm lier, and that she was a rebuke to themselves.

Tliat under the snow there should be mud ; that at the heart of
the wildrose there should be not one worm, but many ; that the
edelweiss should be rotten and worthless after all — what joy ! The
imagined joy of angels over one who repents can never be one-
thousandth ])art so sweet and strong as the actual joy of siniuTs over
one purity that falls.

tSo she had always been a falsehood like them all! So Correze
had always been her lover 1 All the grand ladies and all the pretty
ladies in the great world laughed gingerly, and tittered with that
litter, which ill Mary Jane and Louison one would call vulgar ; and,
in their nests of new knicknackery and old art, cooed together and
soothed each others’ rulllcd plumage, and agreed that they were none
of tliern surprised.

Meanwhile Vero know nothing, and went on her way with calm,
l)roud feet, unwitting that amongst the ermine of her mantle of in-
nocence the moths of slander were at work. AVho first said it? No
<»no knew. Perhaps her mother engendered it by a sigh. Perhaps
her husband’s friend begot it by a smile. No one could ever tell.
Only society talked. 'J'liat was all. Society talked. It means as
much as when in Borgia’s days they said, “ To-night the Pope sups
with you.”

Lady Dolly heard, as women like her hear everything. “ Arc
they saying this ? I always thought they w'ould say it,” she thought,
and was vaguely disquieted, and yet not ill-pleased. When she had
(uuight the first rumour of it one afternoon, in a whisper never meant
for her cars, she had gone back to her dressing-room to get ready foi
a dinner at an embassy, and had been good-nature itself to her maid
easily xdeased with her curls, and quite indilfercnt as to what jewch
they gave her. “Anything looks ell with white,” she had said
dreamily, and her maid thought she must have got another “ affair ”
on the wind. But she was only feeling a sort of velvety content in
the ultimate justice of things. “ She has been so cruel to me,” she
thought, really, honestly thought it. “ She has always been so cold
and so grave, and so very unidcasant, and always looked/oally as if
one were no better than one should bo ; it would be very funny if
she gets a few ‘ nasty ones,’ as the boys say, herself ; it really will
be no more than she deseryes. And, besides, people don’t like that

MOTHS.

sort of manner, tlmt sort of way she has with her eyelids, as if one
were something so very had and queer if one just happen to say the
least little thing tliat she fancies not quite correct ; nobody does like
it, it is so very unsympathetic; women arc sure to pay her out if
they get the least chance, and rnen will be quite as delighted to hear
it. It is such a mistake not to make yourself pleasant, not to bo
like everybody else and always amiable. ^>uch heaps of p(’oplc will
always take your j)art if you have been aniiabl(\ 1 wonder if it is
true? No, of course it isn’t true. I don’t believe Correze ever
kissed the back of her hand. But it will be very funny if she should
get talked about; very sad, but so funny too ! ”

And Lady Dolly’s mind drifted coinplaoi’ntly and comfortably
over a long series of years, in which slie had skated on the very
thinnest ice without ever getting a drencliing, and had had all tho
ibur winds of heaven blowing '‘stories” about her like a sciattcred
])a.ck of cards, and yet had never been the worse for any one of
lliein. “ It is because I have ahvays bceu so pleasant to tlioin all,”
thought Lady Dolly comidacciitly, and indeed she always had
been.

iSbc had said very ill-natured things when they were safe to be
said ; she had laughed at nearly everybody when their backs were
turned ; she had often «amuscd herself with putting spokes in tin;
wheels of ha])py marriages, of promising courtships, of social
ambitions, of youtbl'ul careers ; but slie had done it all merely as
a sqiiirrel steals nuts, and she had always been })leasant to women ;
always kissed them, always caressed them, always conlided, or
always seemed to confide, in them, and above all bad always made
them think her both silly and successful, a union of tJic two most
popular social qualities. “ Vere never would kiss any of them,”
she thought, with the contcmi)t that an old dii)lomatist feels for an
(.)bsiinate politician who will not understand that language is given
to us to conceal our thoughts ; and she drew her gloves up to the
elbow and took her big fan and went to her party with a com-
placent feeling of superiority and expectation, •“ It would be very
horrid, of course,” she thought, “and of course it would bo dreadful
if there were any scene ; and I am not very sure, what the Russian
laws arc if it were to come to any separation de corps et de hiens ;
liut still if she were to get a fright one couldn’t altogether bo sorry.
It would teach her that she was only made of the same stuff as
other people. ” ' •

For wltat with the ma^y years of separation from her daughter,
and the sense of shame that perpetually haunted her for the sacri-
fice she had made of Vere’s fair life, Lady Dolly had almost grown
to hate her. She was always envying, fearing, disliking, tho pale,
cold, beautiful woman whose diamonds outshone her own as the
sun ontslilnes tho lamps ; Yore was not one tithe so much her dead
husband’s child as she was the Princess Zouroff, and there were
many times when Lady Dolly caught hc’-sclf thinking of |icr only

330

MOTHS.

as ilio Princess Zourolf, as a social rival and a somal superior, and,
as such, hating her and forgetting, quite forgetting, that she had
ever been a little flovver-liko baby that had owed life to herself.

Vere has been so cruel to mo,*' she would think, “ and so very
unforgiving.^^

For Lady Dolly, true woman of the times, always thought that
those whom she had wronged were cruel to her. Why would they
not forget ? ISho herself could always forget.

“It shows such a bad disposition to resent and remember so
long,” she would say to herself; life was too short for long memo-
ries. “Give me the art of oblivion,” cried Themistocles ; Lady
Dolly had learned the art, or rather had had the power born in her,
and forgot, as naturally as birds moult in autumn, her sins, her
lollies, her offences, and her friends.

Only one thing she never forgot, and that was a wound to her
vanity — and no one ever looked at her when her daughter was
nigh.

Zouroff, who did not know “ society talked,” still felt abashed
before the presence of his wife ; he felt as Louis of Hungary felt
when he saw the celestial roses in the lap of that ^saintly queen to
whom Madame N^ilaguine compared Vere.

Since the day when her mother’s name had been spoken between
them, he had never seen his wife alone one moment, and never had
fairly niet her glance.

Yet when they were in the same room in socic.'ty his eyes
followed her as they had never done before, wistfully, sombrely,
wonderingly, Jeanne de Sonnaz said to luirself: “ He will end as
le mari amownux^' and so thinking spoke to him one liiorning
early, when ho was sitting in that little yellow boudoir, with all its
Chinese idols, and Chinese work, which was so curiously unlike all
the rest of the dark old hotel of the Renaissance, which a Due
de Sonnaz had built under Francis I. With all her cleverest tact
she brought uppermost the name of Correze, and dropped little
hints, little suggestions, harmless yet pregnant, as she loaned back
in her low chair, smoking a cigarette with her nup of coffee.

Zouroff grew irritated at last, but he did not know how to
express his irritation without appearing absurd in her sight, or
provoking her laughter.

« My dear, you must be blind not to see that there is some
sentiment between Vera and this dyric Bossuet, who made your
piano his pulpit,” she continued, as he muttered something not
very intelligible. “ When ho refused to come to Svir you might
have known. What singer without a motive refuses a mountain of
roubles ? Besides, he was at Ischl. I did not tell you — why
should I tell you — but he serenaded her adorably, he climbed to
impossible altitudes to get her flowers ; he went away in the oddest,
most abrupt, fashion. My dear Sergius, you are a brute, a bat, a
mole — - ”

MOTHS.

331

Pshaw I tlilj man is only a mime, a mime with a thrush’s
j)ipo,” said ZourofF, with rough scorn. “ Do you suppose she would
descend

C*est convenuy’^ intcrrui)tcd Madame Jeanne ; “ Oh^ c^est coti^
venu. Your wife is the pearl of her sex, she is a second Madame
Sainte Elisabeth, all the world knows that ; when wo see her at
dinner we expect an angel to fill her glass with wine of Paradise ;
oh yes, you cannot suppose I mean the slightest indiscretion in her.
Ycra is incapable of an indiscretion, so incapable, that in a less
beautiful woman such extreme goodness would make her utterly
uninteresting ; but still, for that very reason she is just the sort of
person to cling to an idea, to preserve a sentiment like a relic in a
silver box ; and I have always heard, if you have not, that Correzo
is Ijcr idea, is her relic.”

Zouroff listened gloomily ; he did not as yet believe her, yet a
dark sense of jealousy began to burn in him as slow matches burn ;
a little sjmrk slowly creeping that in time will fire a city. It was
scarcely jealousy so much as it was offence, and irritated incre-
dulity, and masterful possession stung by idea of invasion.

But as yet he believed nothing ; he smiled a little moodily,
“Your imagination runs away with you,” he said curtly, “ Vera
was sixteen years old when I married her ; English girls, ma chercy
do not have affairs at that age, even if, at the same hour in France,
Cupid creep behind the lexicons and missals.”

Jeanne de Sonnaz was angry in her turn. When she had been
sixteen at her convent she had been very nearly causing a terrible
scandal with a young lieutenant of Chasseurs, whom her powerful
family succeedecl in ha\ iiig discreetly ordered to Africa ; she had
not thought that Sergius Zouroff knew aught of that silly old story.

“ I did not speak of Cupid or of anything so demoralising and
demode^' she said carelessly. “ I know there was some story, 1
remember it very well, something romantic and graceful of Correzo
and your wife, when she was a girl — a very young girl ; I thinl?*ho
saved her life, 1 am not sure; but I know that she thinks him a
guardian angel# Pray did you know that it was his interposition
that sent Noisette back to Paris that day of our fancy-fair ? ”
Zouroff swore a savage oath. “What accursed interference;
what insolent audacity I Are you sure ? ”

“Correze is as insolent as if he were a x)rince of the blood.
More so, for they must please to reign, but he reigns to please —
himself,” said Madame Jeanne with a little laugh. “Did you
never know that of Noisette? Oh how stupid men are ! I guessed
it and I found it out. Women always can when, they choose find
out anything. Corr^ze is always taking the part of knight to your
wife; he J^ills the dragons and chases the robbers, and is always
there when she wants him ; did he not save her from the storm off
Yillafranca ? ”

Zouroff paced to and fro the room tc,.the peril of the hrimlorionB

332

MOTEB.

and hnC‘M)rac. There was a heavy frown od liis brows ; ho
remembered the storm of Villafranca only too well, since it had
preceded the song of the “ Golden Cup.”

I do not believe it,” he said doggedly, for he did not.

“ So much the better,” said his friend drily.

”I always notice,” she added after a little pause, “that very
:ynical and sceptical people (you are very sceptical and very
cynical) never do believe in a simple truth that stares them in the
hice. 1 am not saying the least harm of your wife — where is the
narm ? She is of an exalted temx^erament ; she takes life like a
poem, like a tragedy ; she is a religious woman who really believes
in sins as our peasantry in ‘la Bretagne bretonnante' believe in
spirits and saints; she will never do any harm whatever. But for
that vpry reason she shut her relic up in her silver box and
worships it at home. Correze is always worshipped, though not
always so spiritually. Ko one ever worships you, my dear, you arc
not of that order of men. Why do you look so angry? You
should be thankful. It is very nice that your wife should admire
a lelic ; she niight, you know, be dragging your name across Europe
at the coat tails of a dozen young dragoons, and though you could
shoot them, no doubt, that is always very ridiculous. It is so
impossible for husbands at any time not to look ridiculous. You
must have looked very so when Corrozo was singing that song; oh,
1 shall regret to the last day of my life I was not there ! ”

Madame Jeanne leaned back and laughed aloud, with her hands
behind her head and her eyes shut.

Zourod* continued to pace to and fro the little pretty crowded
chamber.

“You will break some of my idols,” she said when she had
done laughing. “ I hope I have not broken one of your idols ?
IIow could one ever suppose you cared for your wife? ”

“ It is not that,” said Zouroff roughly, lie was shaken, dis-
turbed, enraged ;' ho did not know wdiat to think, and the vanity
and the arrogance that served him in the stead of pride were up in
arms. : t

“ Of course, yes ; it is that,” said Madame Jeanne coolly ; “ I
always wondered you were so indifferent to her ; she is so hand-
some. And 1 always thought that if she ever loved any one
else you would be madly in love with her once more, or rather
much more than you ^vere at first.” *

Zouroff made a gesture so savage as ho motioned her to silence,
that even her tongue ceased for a moment its chatter.

One must not say too much,” she thought, “ or he will go and
do something premature,”

“ What does it matter ? ” she said, consolingly ; “ a woman who
is so much loft to herself as Vera is, will be certain to find some
compensation for all you deny her. You clumsy Baltic bear I you
do not understand women. Believe me, it is very dangerous to

MOTHS.

333

marry a mere girl, a child, hurl all her illusions and all her
modesties away in one month, and then leave her all alone with the
reflections you have inspired and the desires you have awakened.
I am no moralist, mon am% as you know, but that I do say. It is
true ten thousand times in ten years — and ten thousand times the
result is the same. Were the Princess Zouroff to have a lover,
Correze or any other, you could not complain. It would simply be
the natural sequence of your own initiations. As it is, you must
be tliankful that she is Madame Sainte Elisabeth. You are not
more ridiculous than the world is ; mothers screen their daughters
from every hint and every glimpse of impropriety, and then they
marry them and think no harm can come of it. Can a bishop’s
blessing muzzle senses once eoeilles, passions once let loose V Vera
is faithful to you as yet. But if she were not, could you blame
lier ? Can you expect a woman of her years to live the life of a
nun when you have treated her as if she were a fUle de joie f Bo
reasonable. You cannot tear the skin oif a peach, and then com-
plain that it does not retain its bloom. Yet that is what you and
all men do do. It is unutterably absurd. Some one will do it with
my Berthe and my Claire, and I shall hate the some one ; for I love
my little girls. Yes, I do ! While you know very well that she
is "

“You preach very eloquently!’^ said Zourolf, with his face
flushed and his thick eyebrows drawn together.

“ 1 preach what I know,’’ said his friend ; “ what I have ob-
served, as I say, a thousand times ten thousand times — men tcacli
lubiicity and expect chastity. It is really too ridiculotis. But it
is what we call the luolincss of marriage. Now, will you please to
go away ? Paul has a 'fusion’ breakfast of all the parties, and 1
want to dress.”

«But ”

“ Go away 1 ” said Madamo Jeanne, imperiously, with a little
stamp of her slipper.

Zouroff, who even to his own autocratic master was seldom
obedient, took his leave, and went. She had made his blood hot
with rage, his head dull with suspicion. He threw himself into his
carriage and drove through the streets of Paris in moody reflection.
Uttered by a virtuous woman, the words he had heard would have
made no more impression than any court sermon that he had to sit
throughout and hear in an Imperial chapel ; but spoken by Jeanne
de Sonnaz they smote him hardly.

A better emotion than was usual with her, had moved her in
speaking them, a sense of justice towards the absent woman whom
she had yet all the will in the world to destroy ; and the bitterness
of them was an unwilling witness from a femme galante to which
he could rmc attach cither favouritism or prejudice, and so weighed
on him and smote him heavily, A rebuke even from S. John of
the Golden Mouth would have left him callous and scofllng, but a

334

MOTHS.

condemnation from the lips of one of the compunions of his sins
and follies — one of the worldliest of this world — made him wince
under its justice ; and he knew that his sins against his wife were
heavier and grosser than even Jeanne de Sonnaz knew or guessed.

The sullen remorse that had brooded in him ever since the day
on the terrace at Villafranca deepened and darkened over him.
There was cruel and coarse blood in his veins, the blood of a race
that through long centuries had passed their lives in passion, in
tyranny, and in deeds of violence, denying no impulse, fearing no
future. But there was manliness in him also, though weakened,
depraved, and obscured j and this manliness made him feel a
coward beside Vere.

A curious jealousy took possession of him, which was half
hatred and half remorse. He felt like one of those princes who
own a classic and world-renowned statue, and shut it in a cabinet,
and never care to look at it, yet who being menaced with its loss,
suddenly rise to fury, and feel beggared. Not because the classic
marble was any joy or marvel to themselves, but because the world
had envied it to them vainly, and it had made their treasure-house
the desired of others. He suddenly realised that the loss of his
wife would, like that of the statue, make him poor in the eyes of
Europe, and leave his palaces without their chief ornament. He
did not, as yet, believe himself menaced. Like most men of vicious
lives, he was never deceived as to a woman^s innocence. He knew
his wife to be as innocent as the little dead children she had borne
in her bosom. But liow long would she be so ?

And if .she ceased to be so, truth, by those often untrue lips of
Jeanne de Sonnaz, had told him that the fault would lie at his own
door, that ho would reap as he had sown.

As he drove through the streets amidst the noise of Paris, he
saw nothing of the glitter and the movement round him— he saw
Vere in her white cliildish loveliness, as he had seen her on her
wedding night.

That evening, when he returned to make his toilette for a great
dinner at the Kussian Embassy, he was gloomy, perplexed, irreso-
lute. It was towards the close of the season ; the evening was hot ;
the smell of the lilacs in the garden filled all the air ; over where
ruined St. Cloud lay there was a mist that seemed full of rain and
thunder.

For the first time for months ho, hade the woman ask his wife
if she could receive him in her room, and he entered it. Vere was
standing beneath the picture of Gerome ; she was already dressed.
She wore white velvet, a stutf which she preferred, and whose
subtle shades of white it would have been the delight and the
despair of Titian and Paul Veronese to reproduce on canvas or on
panel. She wore the great Russian Order of St. Catherine. About
her throat she had coils of pearls, and under these hung the medal-
lion of the moth and the star.

MOTHS.

335

Zouroff appro?iched her with a roughness that concealed an un-
usual nervousness. His eyes fell on the necklace, and his anger,
tliat was half against himself and half against her, seized on the
jewel as a scapegoat.

“ Who gave you that ? ” he said abruptly.

She answered—

“ 1 think I ought not to say. When you asked me long ago I
did not know.”

“ Your singer sent it you. Take it off.”

She hesitated a moment, then unclasped it She believed in
the old forgotten duty of obedience still.

“ Give it to me.”

She gave it him.

Zouroff threw it on the ground, and set his heel on it, and
stamped the delicate workmanship and the exquisite jewels out of
all shape and into glittering dust.

Vero did not move a muscle. Only her face grew cold like a
stone mask with unutterable scorn.

** A Princess Zouroff does not need to go to the properties of a
theatre for her jewels,” he said, in a thick, hoarse voice. As I
have treated that jcvrel, so I will treat the man, if ever you let him
enter your presence again. You hear ? ”

“I hear.”

All colour had gone from her lips, but her face remained cold
and calm.

“Well?” said her husband, roughly, already, in a measure,
ashamed of his violence, as the diamond star covered the carpet
beneath his feet with spaihling atoms.

“ What do you want me to say ? I am your wife, and you can
offend mo in any way, and I cannot resent it. There is no use in
saying what I think of that.”

lie was silent, and in a measure subdued. He knew very well
that his violence had been cowardly and unworthy, that he had
disgraced his name and place, that he had been a coward and no
gentleman. His new-born sense of fear and of veneration of her
struggled with his incensed vanity and his irritated suspicions.

“ Vera,” he muttered, only half aloud. “ Before God, if you
would let me, I could love you now ! ”

She shuddered.

“ S];)are me that, at least 1 ”•

He understood, and was silenced. He glanced at her longingly,
sullenly, furtively. The shattered jewel lay at his feet.

“ What is that singer to you?” he said, abruptly.

“A man who honours mo. You do not.”

“Were he only of my rank I would insult him, and shoot him
dead.” • "

Vere was silent.

What do you say ? ” he muttered, impatient of her silence.

336

MOTHS.

“ He is of your rank, and he can defend himsblf. Ilis hand is
clean, and so also is his conscience.”

“Will you swear he is no lover t)f yours ? ”

Her eyes flashed, but she took the book of prayer lying on her
table, kissed it, and said —

“ I swear that, certainly.”

Then she laid the book down, and with an accent he had never
heal'd from licr, she turned suddenly on him, in a i)assion of indig-
nation that transformed her coldness into lire.

“How dare you? how dare you?” she said, with a vibration
in her voice that he had never heard there. “ Now that you havci
done me the last insult that a man can pass upon his wife, bo
satisfied, and go.”

Then she put her hand out, and pointed to the door.

He lingered, dazed and fascinated by that new power in her
glance, that new meaning ih her voice.

“ Women change like that when they love,” he said to her
aloud. “ Arc you not of the new school, then ? You know very
well you have no fidelity from me. Why should you be faithful
to me? They say you need not be.”

She still seemed to him transfigured and risen above him; her
fair face had the glow of holy scorn, of just wrath, still on it.

“ Arc your sins the measure of ray duty ? ” she said, with un-
iiiterahle contempt. “Do you think if it were only for you, for
youy that 1 were decent in my life and true to my obligation, I
should not years ago have failed, and been the vilest thing that
lives? You do not understand. Have you never heard of self-
respect, of honour, and of God?”

Tlio words touched him, and the look upon her face awed him
for an instant into belief in her and belief in heaven ; hut against
his instinct and against his faith the long habit of a brutal" cyni-
cism and a mocking doubt prevailed, and the devil in him, that had
so long lived with the vile and the foolish of his world, drove him
to answer her with a bitter sneer.

“ Your words are grand,” he said to her, “ and I believe you
mean them. Yes, you do not lie. But those fine things, my prin-
cess, may last so long as a woman is uiitomptcd. But so long only.
You are all Eve’s daughters ! ”

Then he bowed and left her. He hated himself for the thing
he had said, but he could not have stayed the devil in him that
uttered it. If his wife betrayed him that night ho knew that he
would have no title to condeiun her ; yet he thought, as he went
from her presence, if she did— if she did — he would slit the throat
of her singing-bird, or of any other man, if any other it were.

Vere stood erect, a sombre disgust and revolt in her eyes. Her
husband had said to her, “ thou fool I all sin alike ; do thou like-
wise.”

In a few moments sIiq stooped and raised the fragments of the

MOTHFi, 337

jewels and the twisted and broken goldsmith’s work. It was all
shattered except the sappliire moth.

Slic shut the moth and all the shining brilliant dust in a secret
diawcr of her jewel-case, then rang for her women. In another
twenty minutes she entered her carriage, and drove in silence with
her husband beside her to the Rue de Grdnelle.

“Lc Prince et la Princessc Zouroff!” shouted the lackeys,
standing in a gorgeous line down the staircase of the Embassy.

CHAPTER XXIV.

It was an April night when tlu; necklace of the moth and the star
]>C!iislied under the heel of Zourotf; there were two months more
til rough which the life in Paris lasted, for Zouroff adored the boule-
vards, even in summer months; the asjihaltc had a power to charm
him that oven the grass of his forest drives never rivalled, and the
Avarm nights of spring and early summer found him driving down
the Champs Elysees to and fro his various haunts, his carriage
lainjis adding two stars the more to its long river of light.

Corning home in the liill daylight from his pleasures he would
at times meet his Avife going out in the clear hours of the early
forenoon. Ho asked licr once roughly Avhere she was going, and
she told liiin, naming the poorest quarter on the other side of the
yeino.

“ Why do you go to such a place ? ” he asked her as she stood
on the staircase.

“ I’hero arc poor there, and great misery,’’ she answered him
reluctantly ; she did not care to speak of these things at any time.

“ And what good will you do ? You will be cheated and robbed,
and even if you arc not, you should know that political sciciico has
lound that private charity is the hothed of all idleness.”

“When political science has advanced enough to prevent
]>overty, it may have the right to prevent cliarity too,” she aii-
sAvered him, with a contempt that showed thought on the theme
Avas not new to her. “ Perhaps charity — I dislike the word — may
do no good ; but friendship from the rich to the poor must do good ;
it must lessen class hatreds.” *

‘'Are you a socialist?” said Zouroff with a little laugh, and
di'GAV hack and let her pass onward. They were the first words he
]»ad spoken to her alone since the night he had destroyed the neck-
lace, and even now they were not unheard ; for there were half a
score of servj?,nts on the stairs and in the vestibule beloAv. Vere
A\amt out to her little brougham in the fresh air of the Avarm lilac-
scented morning as the clock struck ten.

Her husband took his AA’ay to his oAVii'Sct of rooms, rich with

z

338

MOTBS.

orienlal stuffs and weapons, and heavy with the fumes of his
tobacco. lie thought of what his sister had said of S. Elisabtith
and the roses of Paradise; he thought too of what Jeanne de
Sonnaz had said. His wife was greatly changed.

She seemed to him to have aged ten years all suddenly ; not in
the fair beauty of her face, but in her regard, in her tone, in her
look. Was she like the young royal saint of Hungary, or was she
like all women, as ho know them ? He had the careless, half-con-
scious, but profound belief in depravity that is the note of the
century ; he thought all women coguines. That his wife was dif-
fereut to the rest he had believed ; but that she was incapable of
deceiving him ho was in no way sure. Sooner or later they all
went the same road, so he thought. He began to doubt that she
told him the truth as to these errands of her morning hours; his
•sister believed in them indeed, but what should his sister know,
who was never out of her bed till noon was past ?

Verc had no physical fear, and at times she penetrated into the
darkest and roughest quarters of Paris ; the quarters that belch out
those hidden multitudes that make revolution anarchy, and shatter
in dust and blood the visions of patriots. But she was safe there,
though once she heard one man say to another, “ Diantre / what a
sight it would be, that lovely head on a scaffold She turned and
looked at him with a smile : “ I think I should know how to die*,
my friend ; are you quite sure that you would ?

As this worst form of suspicion, that of the tyrant who
trembles, grew upon him, lie did wbat be know was low and vile
and beneath him — he had her watched in these daily hours of
absence. He excused his vigilance to those who had the task by
t he expression of his fears for her safety from the rude and ferocious
classes amongst whom she went. They brought him the weekly
report of all she did, minute by minute, in all its trifling details ;
the courage and the self-sacrifice of that thankless labour, the self-
devotion and patience of that charity, were before him in a chron-
icle she would never have written herself. lie was astonished ;
ho was «ashamed. The superstition that underlies the worldly
ivisdom of the aristocratic lUissian, as it permeates the kindly
stupidity of the Kussian peasant, began to stir in him and trouble
him, lie began to think she was a holy creature. Though he had
no faith, he had that vague religious fear, which often survives the
death of all religious beliefs with those who have been educated in
strict rituals, as he had been.

When June came they went to Felicity. It was the same thing
every year. The world went with them. To her it seemed always
as if they were perpetually on the stage before an audience ; the
audience varied, but the play was always the same.

She would have given ton years of her life for a few weeks' rest,
silence, solitude, with ** plain living and high thinking,” and time
to watqh the clouds, the rdiowers, the woodlands, the ways of birds

MOTHS.

339

and beasts, the leves of the bees and the flowers. But she never
had one day even to herself. There was always on her ear the
murmur of society ; always, like the shadow on the sun-dial, some
duty that was called pleasure, obscuring each hour as it came.

It was a bright Norman summer, the weather clear and buoyant,
the country a sea of apple-blossoms. Once or twice she got away
by herself, and went to the little cluster of cabins on the head of
the cliffs beyond Villerville. The old woman was there — always
knitting, always with a white cap and a blue linen gown, against
the wall of furze.

‘'The lark is dead,” she said, with a shake of the head. “It
was no fault of mine, my Princess ; a boy with a stone one day —
all ! ah ! — how shall I tell the gentleman when he comes ? He
has not been yet this summer; he was hero in midwinter — oh,
(luitc midwinter — and he said he was going away into the north
somewhere. Jesu-Maria I the hcajis of cent-sous pieces he gave me
to take care of that lark I ”

'J^hc shrewd old woman under the white roof of her cap watched
the face of her “ Princcsse.” “ I want to know if she cares too,” she
thought. “But that beautiful angel could not fail to be loved.”

Vere went away slowly through the high grove, even under the
shade of the aiiple-blossoms. How long ago,-— it seemed long as a
century — since she had been the child listening, with her heart in
her eyes, to the song of the lark that was dead I

Her husband said to her sharply that day, after her return,
“ Where were you this morning? You were hours away.”

“ I drove to Villerville,” she answered him.

“ There is a shrine near there, I think ? ” added Mdme. Jeanne,
with apparent simplicity.

The sombre thoughts of Zouroff caught her insinuation.

“I know of no remarkable shrine,” replied Vere, who did not
imagine any double meaning in the words, “ There is none nearer
than Val do Grace.”

Her husband was silent. The Duchesse rose, and hummed a
little song then being sung by Jane Hading: Vous voulcz vous
moquer de moi.

This year Mdme. Jeanne stayed at Fdlicitd.' Why not ? • She
had her little girls Berthe and Claire with her, and her husband
came now and then, and would come for a longer time when the
bouquets of pheasants wo uld« begin to fall in the drives of the
park.

“ Pourquoi •pas f ” she had said, when Zouroff had begged her
to stay in his house, instead of taking a villa at Trouvillo.

“ You would not last year,” ho said, with a man’s stupidity.

“Last year was last year,” said the Duchesse drily; and she
came over ‘and had all the south wing of the chateau for herself and
her Berthe and Claire and their governesses She was really fond
of her children.

m

MOTHS.

^J’he papers of that day spoke of Correzc. He vi^as in Stockholm.

That is far enough ; she cannot have met him,” thought the
Duchesso. “ Villerville must be a pilgrimage of remembrance.
There are women who can live on memories. It must be like
eating nothing but ices and wafers. A hon bouillon and a little
burgundy is better.”

Vere had given her word to her husband and her oath ; she
never supposed that ho could doubt either. If Correze had come
before her in that time she would have said to him with loyal firm-
ness, I must not see you ; my husband has forbidden me,” She
was steadfast rather than impassioned ; honour was the first law of
life to her ; that love should stoop to tread in secret ways and hide
in secret jdaces seemed to her as shameful, nay, grotesque, as for a
soveroign to hide in a cellar or flee in disguise. The intrigues she
saw perpetually, in which her world spent its time, as the spiders
theirs in weaving webs, had’ no savour, no sweetness, for her. Its
l oots w'cre set in treachery or cowardice — in either, or in both. All
the tenderness that was in her nature Correze had touched ; all her
gratitude and all her imagination were awakened by him ; she
j<iiew that the sorrow of a love that might have been sweet and
happy in their lives was with them both, in sad and hopeless resig-
nation. Yet if ho had come before her now she would have said to
him, ** I cannot see you, it would bo disloyal.”

For the old lovely quality of loyalty, which day by day is more
and more falling out from the creeds of men and women, was v(iry
strong in her ; and failure in it seemed to her like “ shame, last of
all evils.”

To Jeanne de Sonnaz this was very droll. So droll that it was
impossible for her to believe in it. She believed in realism, in the
mouldy cheese and the jjewter can ; she did not believe in liny
Bias. She watched Vere narrowly, but she fiiiled to understand
her.

'' How the affair drags ! ” she thought, with some impatience.
“ Can they really bo the lovers of romance who separate themselves
by a thousand leagues, and only love the more the more they are
divided ? It is droll.”

So she kept the snake of suspicion alive and warm in his
bosom.

You were wrong,” said Zouroff with some triumph to her ;
“ you were wrong. The man is iu Korway and Sweden.”

“1 may be,” said the Duchesso meditatively. “But people
come back from Norway and Sweden, and I never said, you will
remember, that he was more to your wife than her knight, her
ideal, her souvenir, I never meant more than that. Wait until
he shall return, then you will see.”

Then ho told her how he had destroyed the necklace. For years
he had been in the habit of telling her such things, and he now
sacrificed, his wife to that habit of confidence in another woman.

MOTHS.

841

“You see ydU were wrong,” he added; “bad she borne any
sentiment towards him would she have seen his jewels destroyed ?
She is not spiritless.”

“ No, sho is not spiritless,” said Madame Jeanne thoughtfully.
“ No, certainly sho is not that. But, in the old houses of the Fau-
bourg, Sergius, I meet a phantom of the past that wo know nothing
about ; a phantom that is made a deity and rules their lives like
their love of Henri Oinq ; a mere ghost, but still potent to omnipo-
tence, and w^e know nothing about it ; they call it Principle. 1
suppose your wife may keep that old dimodS ghost by her too, and
may be ruled by it. I have heard of such things. Oh, wo have no
principle, we have only convenience and impulse, and act either
one or the other. But I assure you such a thing exists.”

“ Scarcely in a woman,” said Zouroff with a contemptuous laugh.

“ Sooner in a woman than a man, for that matter. But of
course it will not last for ever. Your wife is human, and slie will
not pardon you that ruined locket.”

“ She said nothing, or very little.”

“ Said I ” echoed Madame de Sonnaz with scorn, “ you arc
used to us, and to your creatures. Do you think a woman of her
temperament would scream as we, or swear as they do, would go
into hysterics, or would tear your beard ? ”

“ You seem to admire my wife,” he said with irritation.

Jeanne de Sonnaz smiled. “ You know I always did. I admire
her as one admires Bacine, as one admires the women of Port
Iloyal, the paintings of Flandrin, the frescoes of Michael Angelo.
It is quite unattainable, quite unintelligible to me, but I admire
dumbly and without comprehension. Only I told you that you
never should have married a saint, and you never should. 1 am
sorry you destroyed her medallion. It was brutal of you, and
hourgeois,^^

“ And she will remember it,” she added, after a pause, as she
gathered up her silks, with which sho was working an altar screen
for her parish church at Kuilhieres, ‘^be very sure of that. Vera is
not a woman who forgets. I should box your ears, shako you, and
laugh at it all next day, but she would be passive and yet never
forget, nor forgive. Chut ! There she is ! ”

Vere at that moment entered the room in which Madamo
Jeanne was working ; her husband moved with a guilty conscious-
ness away, but sho had heard n<5thing.

“ Princesse, tell me,” said Madame de Sonnaz, “ do you forgive
easily? I think not.”

“ Forgive ? ” said Vera absently. “ Is there any question of it ?
It is for those who offend to ask me that.”

“Do you hear, Sergius?” said his friend with a little laugh.
“ I should like to hear your mea culpa.^'

For the first time an angry doubt came into the mind of Vere,
the doubt tl)at her husband spoke of her with Jeanne de Sonnaz.

342 MOTHS.

She loolted at them both quickly and haughtily, then said very
clearly—

If Monsieur Zourofif know anything that he desires me to
pardon he can speak for himself without an ambassadress, and
without a listener. I came to ask you to allow Berthe and Claire
to come out with mo on the sea.”

“How good you are to those children, but you will iiioeulaU^
them with your own sea frenzy,’’ answered the duchessc with a
little laugh. “ Of couriSe they may go.”

Zouroff had already gone from the room, angry with his friend,
more angry with his wife. Madame Jeanne rose a little impetu-
ously, dragging to the ground the artistic embroideries of the shield
she was working.

“ Vera,” she said, with candour, in her voice and honesty in her
regard, “ do not be angry. ,I am so old a friend of Sergius — he has
told me how ho tore off your locket and destroyed it. I am so
sorry; so very sorry; so is he. But, alas! men are always the
same ; they are all brutes, we know, and — Vera — he is very jealous
of your singer.”

Vere’s face grew very stern.

“ Has he commanded you to speak to me on his behalf?”

“No, my dear — not that; he would scarcely do that in plain
words. But I am an old friend, and I am sorry. Of course it is too
absurd ; but he is very jealous. Be careful ; men of his race have
done mad and cruel things in their time. Do not provoke him.
Do not see Corr^ze.”

“ You mean well, madame,” said Vere in tones of ice. “ But
you err in taste and wisdom, and I think your zeal outstrips your
orders. I scarcely think even my husband can have charged you
with his threats to me.’*

“ Threats? who spoke of threats? A warning ”

“ A warning, then, but none the less an insult You are in my
house, so I can say nothing. Were I in yours I would leave it.
Your children are waiting in impatience — excuse me,”

Madame Jeanne looked after her as she went through the glass
doors on to the sea-terrace, where the pretty little figures of Berthe
and Claire were dancing to and fro in the sunlight. Madame
Jeanne drew her tapestry-frame towards her, and proceeded to fill
in the lilies of S. Ounigonde. She smiled as she bent her head over
the frame.

“If I have ever known my sex,” she thought — “if I have
ever known my sex, a word will go over the north sea, and Corr^ze
will come from his Norwegian summer to a Norman one, and then
—and then — there will be droll things to see. It is like watching
the curtain rise in the Ambigu— there is sure to be melodrama.”

Melodrama amused her; amused her more than comedy. She
had no belief in quiet passion or quiet grief herself, no more than
she had, in quiet principled.

M0TII8.

313

Vere went owtto sea with the little'children, aad in the mellow
sunshine and the sweet orchard-sccntcd air her face was dark with
anger and with disgust, and her heart heaved in a bitter rage and
rebellion.

Her husband spoke of her to another woman — discussed her
acts with another man’s wife! “Oh the coward, the coward!”
she said very low between her set teeth ; it was the blackest word
that her language held. That he should have broken her medalliou
and insulted her with doubt, was* insult enough for a lifetime.
But that ho should relate the affront, and breathe the suspicion,
to another woman seemed to her the very last baseness of life.

“If he were here!” she murmured, with a sudden newborn
consciousness in her, as her eyes filled with scalding tears, and her
heart heaved with indignation. For the first time an indefinito
yearning rose in her to place her hand in the hand of Oorrezo,
and say “avenge me!” Yet had he. even stood before her then
she would not have said it, she would have bidden him go and
leave her.

^ For what Madame Jeanne called a phantom was always beside
her in her path — the phantom of old-world honour, the w’raitli of
(load heroical days.

She leaned against the rail and watched the sea run by the
vessel’s side, and felt the quiet slow tears of a great anguish fill
her eyes and wet her cheeks.

“Do not cry: you arc too pretty to cry,” said little Claire, who
was a soft and tender child 4 and Berthe, who was okh^r and
cleverer and harder, said, “ You should not cry ; it spoils the
eyes.” Then she added reflectively, “ Mainan ne -pleure Jamms,'*

The small yacht they were in ran with the breeze through tho
sweet fresh air. It was a nautical toy, perfect in its way, that
had been given to Vere by her husband when the estate of Felicitci
was settled upon her ; the children had wanted to go to tho
Vaches Koires and search for mussels, and the littlo ship skirted
the coast as lightly as sea-gull, the merry little girls scudding
about its deck like kittens and climbing its cordage like squirrels,
while their mother— their mother who never cried — remained in
the garden of Felicit(5 with a cigar in hen teeth, her person stretched
full length in a low-hung silk hammock, a circle of gentlemen
around her, and amidst them her host, so charmed by the dexterity
of her coquetterics, and so diverted by tho maliciousness of her
pleasantries, that the old pasSion, which a dozen years before she
had awakened in him, perhaps the worst, as it was in a sense tho
strongest and most durable, he had ever known, revived in him
sufficiently for jealousy, and held him by her side.

It was low water when they reached that part of tho Vaches
Noires which lies underneath what is called the desert. ’I'he
strangely shaped rocks towered above, beyond, tho sea was blue
and smooth, the sand was wet, the chiklrm’s equille fishing

344

MOTHS.

promised well. A little boat took them off the yacht to the
uncovered beach, and Berthe and Claire, with naked little legs, and
their forks shaped like the real fisherfolk’s, and their bright hair
flying, forgot that .they were little aristocrats and Parisiennes and
became noisy, joyous, romping, riotous children, happy in their sport
and the fine weather. At that part of the rough shore there was
no one near except some peasants digging for their livelihood, as
the little girls were digging for play, at the silvery hermits’ holes
in the sands. There were fetes at Houlgate which kept the summer
crowd that day from the distant rocks. Berthe and Claire, agile
as they were, were no match for the agility of the lords of the
soil, and the pastime absorbed and distracted them. Vcrc, seeing
them so happy, left them in the care of her old skipper, who was
teaching them the mysteries of the sport, and sat down under tlic
sombre amphitheatre of the rocks.

She was fond of the children, but this day their shouts and
their smiles alike jarred on her ; she had learned for the first time
that it was with their mother that her husband discussed her acts
and thoughts. She sat quite alone in a sheltered spot, where the
slate of the lower formation had been hollowed by the winter waves
at high tides into a sort of niche ; she thought of the day when,
older in years than these little children, but younger in heart than
oven they were now, she had come on these shores in her old brown
holland skirts. It was just such weather as it had been then ;
clear, cloudless, with a sunlit sea, and an atmosphere so free from
mist that the whole lino of the far-reaching coast, now become so
familiar to her sight, was visible in all its detail, from the mouth
of Seine to the mouth of Orno.

Her heart was very weary.

The distant laughter of the little children borne to her ear by
the wind, jarred on her. Where was the use of honour and good
faith? They smelt sweet, like a wholesome herb, in her own
hand, hut in all her world none set any store on them. She was
free to tlirow them aside if she chose. She would be more popular,
find more sympathy, nay, to her husband himself would seem more
human and more truthful if she did so. The sense of life's careless-
ness, impotcncy for good, and frightful potency for evil, weighed
on her like a stone. Her husband had said to her that women
wore only loyal till they wore tempted ; was it so ? Was honour
so poor a thing ? she thought. In dark old Bulmer the now dead
woman had taught her to think honour a sword like Britomart’s,
that in a maiden’s hand might be as potent and as strong as in a
knight's. What was the poor frail empty thing that bent at a
touch and broke? She thought what they called honour must
surely bo no finer or better thing than a mere dread of censure, a
mere subserviency to opinion ; a thing without substance or soul,
a mere time-service and cowardice.

A fisherman came by her with his load of mussels and little

MOTHS. 346

eels going on t© Boiigeval. He pointed up above her head and
said, in his Froissart-like accent —

“There will be a broken neck up yonder, unless Our Lady
interferes/’

Vere, alarmed for the children, who were out of sight, looked
upward ; she saw a man coining down the precipitous cliffs from
the country above.

Her heart stood still; her blood ran cold; she recognised
Correzo.

The fisher stood staring upward; the descent was one which
the people themselves would never have attempted; where the
face of the dark stone was a sheer declivity, broken into sharp
l)eaks and rough bastions, on which there seemed scarce a ledge
for a sea-bird to perch on, Correzo was descending with the sure
foot that in his boyhood had let him chase the ibex arid the
boudequin of the Alps of Dauphine and Savoy, and had lot him in
later years hunt the stcinbock of Styria and Garin thia in its
liighest haunts. Vere, risen to her feet, stood like the fisherman
gazing upward. She was like stone herself; she neither moved
nor cried out ; she scarcely breathed. She looked upward, and in
tliose few moments all the horrors of death passed over her.

Was it an instant, or an hour? she never knew. One moment
he was in the air, hanging as the birds hang to the face of the
cliff, beneath him only the jagged points of a thousand pinnacles
of rock : the next he stood before her, having dropped lightly and
('asily on the sands, while the peasant gasping, muttered his
paternosters in incoherent awe.

CoiToze was very pale, and his lips trembled a little ; but it was
not the perilous descent of the rocks that had shaken hi?n, it was
tlie look which he saw on her face. If ho had dared ; nay, had
she been any other woman, he would have said, “ You cannot deny
it now ; you love me.”

’Jlieir eyes met as they stood together on the same coast where
they had first seen one .another, when ho was gay and without
sorrow, and she was a child. They knew then that they loved
each other, as they had not known it when he had sung in the
Paris salon—

Si vous saviez qiie je vous aime,

Surtout si vous savicz comment—

For between them there then ’^lad been doubt, hesitation, offence,
uncertainty ; but now the great truth was bare to them both, and
neither dreamed of denying it.

Yet ho only said as he uncovered his bead, “ Forgive me, Prin-
ccsse ; I fear I startled you.”

“You startled me,” she answered mechanically. “Why run
such a frigli'tful danger ? ”

“ It is none to me ; the rocks are safer than the ice-walls. I
was above and I saw you ; there was no (Jithcr way.”

346

MOTEB.

The fisher had shouldered his creel and was trudging homeward ;
he paused abruptly, he stood before her still bareheaded, he was
very pale.

Without being conscious what she did she had seated herself
again on the ledge of slate, the sea and the shore blended dizzily
before her eyes.

Oorrezo watched her anxiously, pitifully ; his courage failed him,
he was afraid of this woman whom he loved, ho who had been
always, in love, victorious.

“ Have I displeased you ? ” he murmured humbly. “ I have
come straight from Norway ; I thought I might take one hour on
this coast before going to Paris ; I heard that you were lure. I
have been an exile many months—**

She stopped him with a gesture.

“I will not affect to misunderstand, there is no good in affec-
tation ; but do not speak so to me. I cannot hear it. I thank
you for your courage at Villafranca, I am not ungrateful ; but we
must not see each other — unless it bo in the world.**

“ You did not say that at Villafranca.**

‘ “ My husband had not then said it to me.**

Correze moved and faltered a little, as if he had been struck a
blow.

“You obey Prince Zouroff!** he exclaimed with disdain, and
petulance, and passion.

“ I obey the word I gave Prince Zourofl?*

Silence fell between them.

Vere was very pale; she was still seated; there was a sort of
faintness on her; she had no time for thought or resolution, she
only clung by instinct to one of the creeds of her childhood, the
creed that a promise given was sacred,

Correze stood beside her checked, mortified, chafed, and
humbled. He, the most eloquent, the most ardent, lover of Ins
time, was mute and wounded, and could find no word at the
instant that could speak for him. Ho was struck dumb, and all
the vivid imagining, the fervent persuasiveness, the poetical fluency
that nature had given to him and art had perfected, fled away
from him as though they had never been his servants to command,
and loft him mute and helpless.

Vere looked away from him at the blue shining sea,

“ If you think of me,** she said«-slowly, “ if you think of me as
you thought when you sang the Coupe d’Or, you will eco now.’*

“ With no other word ? ’*

“Mv life is hard enough," she murmured; “do not make it
harder.**

There was an unconscious appeal in the words that, from a
woman so proud and so silent, touched him to the quick. All his
passions longed to disobey her, but his tenderness, his chivalry, his
veneration, obeyed. » /

MOTHS. 347

“ I told my husband not long ago that you honoured me,*’ she
added in a low voice. “Do not let me think that I deceived
myself and him.**

Corr^ze bent his head.

“ I will never deceive you,** he said simply, “ and at any cost 1
will obey you.**

He looked at her once ; her eyes were still gazing away from
him at the sea. He lingered an instant, then he laid on her knee
some forget-me-nots he had gathered in the brooks above, and Icfi
her ; across the wet sands and the disordered detritus of the beach
his light swift step bore him quickly to the edge of the murmuring
sea. There was a boat there, an old brown rowing boat, and its
owner was mending nets on its bench.

In another few moments the old boat was pushed in the water,
the fisherman willingly bent to his oars — CorrSze also was rowing —
with the helm set for Honfleur. When He was far away on the water
he looked back, but then only : Vere sat motionless.

He had been beside her, he whom an hour earlier she had longed
for as an avenger, and she had driven him away.

She had been true to the false, to the unfaithful faithful.

The man whose genius had been the one solace and pleasure of
her life, whose beauty and whoso sympathy and whose chivalry were
as a sorcery to her, who would have put his whole fate in her hands
as he had put the myosotis, had been there beside her to do with as
she chose, and she had sent him from her.

Her husband had said, “ women are true till they are tempted.’*
She had been tempted and had been strong, strong enough not even
to say to him, “ Avenge me.**

The sun had sunk low, the late day grew grey, the dusky sea
ran swiftly and smoothly, soon the terraces and towers of Felicitd
rose in sight through the twilight mists. The little children, tired
and sleeping, lay curled quietly on their cushions at her feet : she
felt weak and weary as if from some long combat, and her heart
ached — ached for the pain she caused, the pain she bore. She
stretched her hand over the rails and dropped the forget-me-nots in
the fast running sea.

She would not keep a fiower of his now that she knew

She saw the blue blossoms tossed for a moment on the water and
then engulfed. “ I do not want them,” she thought, “ I shall never
forgot ; it will be he who will forget.’*

For she thought so, with that humility of a lonely soul which
is deemed so proud only because it is so sad.

He would go into the world, be the world*s idol, and forget. But
she would remember till she died. And even at this consciousness
a sense of guilt came over her, a sense of shame burned in her. She
loved this man'who was not her husband — she, a wife. To her
conscience and her honour, both unworn and undulled, even so much
as this seemed a treachery to her word i-nd an uncleanliness, “ Do

348

MOTHS.

I grow like the others ? ” she mused, with a sort of horror at herself ;
the others, the women of her world, who made intrigues their daily
bread. “ 0 my angel Haphael, you shall not fall nor I ! ” she mur-
mured, half aloud, as the sea swept on its foam the little blue blos-
soms, and her eyes grow blind and her heart grew faint.

Fall into the slough of abandoned passions, into the dishonesty
of hidden loves, into the common coarse cowardice of an impure
secresy ? ah, never, never I She felt cold, sick, weary, as she left
the little road under the shadow of the walls of F^licitd, and as-
cended the stone steps that mounted from the sea to the garden.
But she moved firmly and with her head erect.

Honour is an old-world thing ; but it smells sweet to those in
whose hand it is strong.

It was nearly nine; the shadows were dark, a low pale yellow
lino where the sun had gone down was all that was left of day. The
little girls, sound asleep, were carried away from the boat by their
women. The first gong was sounding that summoned the guests of
the house to dinner. She was dressed quickly, and went down to
the drawing-rooms ; there was a shade like a bruise under her eyes,
and her lips were pale ; otherwise she looked as usual.

Jeanne de Sonnaz, greeting her with effusion, kissed her and
thanked her for the children's hapi)y day.

A^ero sat opposite her husband through the dinner, which was
always a banquet. Her eyes wore tired, but there was a steady liglit
in them; something heroic and invincible, that made the grave
beauty of her face like that of a young warrior’s. No one saw it.
'riiey only thought that she was tired, and so more silent than
usual.

The evening wore on its way ; to her it seemed endless ; there
were many people staying in the house ; it was such an evening as
the first that she passed at F<)licit<i, when she had watched society
with wondering gaze, as a bright comedy. Jeanne de Sonnaz, with
a dress of red and gold, and some of her grand rubies on, sparkled
like a jewel, till her ugly face seemed radiant and handsome. Sh(^
sang songs of Theo and of Judic; she played impromptu a scene of
Celine Chaumont's ; she was brilliant and various as her mannoi
was, and she sent a shower of mirth on the air that was to others as
contagious as a laughing gas. ‘'What a pity she tires lierself so
much by the sea or on it,” she said of Vere to Sergius Zouroff. “It
makes her so silent and so morne incthe evening.”

He muttered something like a suppressed oath, and went to his
wife.

“ You look like a statue ; you leave others to do all your duties
for you ; you sweep through the rooms like a ghost. Why cannot
you rouse yourself, and laugh and dance ? ”

A^ere made him no answer.

Laugh and dance in public, and in stealth betray him? To
do that would have made hjm content, herself popular.

MOTHS.

34G

The night woVe itself away in time ; she never well knew how ;
it closed somewhat earlier than usual, for the morrow was the first
(lay of shooting, and Madame Jeanne had hade them rise with the
lark. Vere, instead of going to her room, went out into the gardens.
The night was cool, fragrant, soundless, except for the murmur of
the sea.

To laugh and wear a false or a foolish face — that is all he asks of
me I ” she thought bitterly. If her husband could have seen her
heart as it ached that night, if he could have known that only out
of loyalty to him she had cast the myosotis from her hand into the
sea, would he not only have told her she was an imbecile, and was
too fond of tragedy, and ho was no Othello to be jealous of a humble
handkerchief 1

Would he not have said, “ Look around, and do like others.”

It was between one and two o’clock ; the stars were all at' their
brightest, except where clouds hung over the sea to the north and
obscured them ; the chateau was quiet behind her ; an irregular
yet picturesque pile that grew sombre and fantastic in the shadows,
while in its casements a few lights only gleamed here and there
through the ivy. ^

Vere stood and looked at the waves of the channel without seeing
them. The world seemed empty and silent. Never again would she
hear the voice that had first come to her ear on those shores — never
again — except in some crowded salon or across some public theatre.

She shuddered, and Avent within. The silence and the solitude
were too like her destiny not to hurt her more than even the vain
laughter of fools.” It was the first time that the peace of nature
and of night seemed a reproach to her. For though innocent of any
act unworthy or disloyal to herself, she felt guilty, she felt as if some
])oison had fallen in that golden cup which she strove to keep pure.
To her a thought, a desire, a regret, were forbidden things, since she
was the wife of Sergius Zouroff.

One glass door was open, and some lamps were burning, for the
servants had seen that she remained on the terrace, and two or three
of them, yawning and slee^Dy, stood in the antechambers awaiting her
entrance.

She went up the staircase, past those bronze negroes, with their
gulden torches, which had lighted her childish stops on her first night
at Felicitd.

There were two ways to hcr^wn chamber. One way, the usual
and shortest one, was encumbered by some pictures and statues that
were being moved to another corridor. She took the longer way,
which led through the body of the house to the left wing of it, in
which her owm rooms were, by her choice, for sake of the view down
tlu; sea-coast and northward.

GoingTlfis way she passed the stately gucst-ch ambers which had
been allotted to the Duchesso de Sonnaz.

The lamps in the long gallery hurnccl^iow ; her footfall made no

350

MOTHS.

sound on the carpet ; she passed on as silently as the ghost to which
her husband impatiently likened her. She was thinking neither of
him nor of her guests ; she was thinking how long her life in all likeli-
hood would be since she was young, and how lonely. She was^ think-
ing, “ he bade me keep myself unspotted from the world ; it shall
never be he who lowers me.”

Suddenly a strong ray of light shone across her feet.^ She was
passing a half-opened door — a door that had been shut with a care-
loss hand, and had re-opened. The curtains within were parted a
little ; as she passed, she could not tell why, her eyes were drawn to
the mellow light shining between the tapestries.

It was the door of Jeanne de Sonnaz. Through the space Vere
saw into the room, and saw her husband.

For a moment she made a step forward to enter and front them.
The blood leaped into her face ; all the pride in her, outraged and
disgusted, sprang up in arms under that last and worst of insults.
Then with a strong effort she thrust the door to, that others should
not see what she had seen ; that she should screen his dishonour,
if he would not ; and passed on unseen and unheard by those within
to her own room. When she reached it she trembled from head to
foot, but it w’as with rage.

She came of a bold race, who had never lightly brooked insult^
though she had long borne its burden patiently, because duty was
stronger with her than pride. She sat down and drew paper and
pens to her, and wrote three lines :

“ Either I or the Duchesse de Sonnaz leave Fdlicitc to-morrow
before noon.

(Signed) “ Vera, Princess Zouroff.”

She scaled the note, and gave it to her woman for the Prince.

** You will give it to Ivan ; he will give it to his master in the
morning ” she said, as they were leaving the room. She w^as still
careful of his dignity, as he was not. That night she did not sleep.

At sunrise they brought her a letter from her husband. It said
onl}^, “ Do what you please. You cannot -suppose I shall insult my
friend for you. — Zouroff.”

“ His friend ! ” said Vero with a bitter smile. She recalled
memories of her life in Paris and at Svir; recalled so many hints,
so many glances, so many things tli^it she had attached no meaning
to, which now were quite clear as day. She remembered the warn-
ing of Corr^zo.

''He too must have known ! ” she thought; and her face burned
to think that the man who loved her should be aware of all the out-
rage passed on her by the man who owned her.

" The Prince asks an answer,”.they said, at her door.

''There is no answer,” said Vere, and added, to her woman,
“ bring me a little tea, an^then leave me.”

MOTES. 351

They thought slio wished to sleep, and suspected nothing else.
Left to herself she gathered up some needful things with her own
hands, the first thing she had ever done for herself since the old
simple days at Bulmcr. She put together the jewels her own family
had given her ; shut the shattered necklace of the moth and the star
up with them in a casket, and* put on the plainest clothes she had.
She was ready to leave his house now and for ever. She would take
nothing with her that was his or that had been hers by his gift. Of
the future she had no clear thought ; all that she was resolute was
that no other night should find herself and Jeanne de Sonnaz under
the same roof.

All the house was quiet. ITo one had risen except herself. She
waited, because she did not choose to go out like one in hiding, or
ashamed, from her own home. She intended to leave the place in
full daylight and publicity. The world could say what it liked, but
it could not then say she had left secretly, and the shame would be
for those who merited it. Without and within all was still. The
sea had scarce a sound, no breeze stirred in the trees, the silvery haze
that heralded a hot day was over land and water. She stood at the
window and looked out, and a quiet tranquillity came over her. She
was about to leave it all for ever, all the pomp and the splendour, all
the monotony and the feverishness, all the burden of rank and the
weariness of pleasure. She would soon be alone, and poor. She was
not afraid. She would go into the dim, green German country, and
live in some man-forgotten place, and got her bread in some way.
She was not afraid. Only all the world should know where she
went, and why.' All the world should know she was alone.

She stood beside tho open casement with the dog beside her ;
he would be her solo companion in the loneliness to which she
would go. Corr^ze — she thought of Corr^ze, but, with the stern-
ness which is apt to exist in very pure and very proud natures, she
thought only “ if he come to me when I live alone he too will be
a coward ! "

And as a coward she would treat him, sho thought ; for her
heart was but half awake still, and of passion she yet knew but
little, and what she knew she feared as a thing unclean.

Suddenly her door was burst open ; her husband entered ; his
eyes were bloodshot, his face was dark with fury.

“Are you mad?” he cried to her, as ho saw her travelling
jewel-case and tho locked valiao, and casket.

She looked at him with a grand dignity upon her face, as
though she saw something leprous and loathsome.

“ I gave you your choice,” she said in a voice that vibrated with
restrained wrath, “ You took your choice.”

She pointed to his letter that lay open on the table.

“ And I telh you that neither you nor she shall go out of my
house ! ” he swore with a great oath. “ You shall receive her,
smile on her, sit at the same table witbjber, please her in all thing.s

352 MOTHS.

as I do. She is the "only woman that I never tiro of, the only
woman that contents me ”

‘‘ Tell Taul de Sonnaz so ; not me.”

Her husband’s face grew terrible and hideous in the convulsions
of its rage.

“ He ! he is not a fool like yon, he k’lows what the world is
and wonnai arc. By Christ, how dare you ? — how dare you si)cak
to me of him or her? I am my own master, and 1 am yours.
Sooner than let you insult my friends for one moment,! would fling
you from this window in the sea.”

“ I know that. It is I who go, she who remains.”

*'As God lives, neither of yon shall go. ^Vhat! you think 1
shall allow such a scandal as my wife’s departure from under my
i-oof?-. ”

** I shall not allow such an outrage as for Madame do Sonnaz to
be under ycnir roof with mo.”

She spoke firmly and in a low tone and without violences
Something in her tone from its very calmness subdued and abashed
him for an instant : but his hesitation scarcely lasted more than
that. “ Madame de Sonnaz is my guest — my honoured guest,” he
said passionately. “I will not have her affronted. 1 will not liav(!
a breath on her name. What, 3^)11 will make a scene that will
ring tlirougli all Europe — 3^)11 will go out of iny house wlieu
my friends arc in it — you will make 3'oursclf and her and me? 1h(‘,
h3^e- words of society ! Never, by heaven ! You arc my wife, aud
as my wife you stay.”

Vere, who was very pale and as cold as though the summer
morning wore a winter’s da3% remained quite calm. B3" great effort
she restrained lier bitter rage, her bomidless scorn. But lie changed
her resolve in nothing. I stay, if Madame de Sonnaz go,” she
said between her teetli. “ If she stay, I go. I told you to choose ;
you did choose.”

Sergius Zouroff forgot that he 'was a gentleman, and all that
was of manliness in him perished in his frenzy, lie raised his arm
and struck lier. She staggered and fell against the marble of tlie
console by which slic stood, hut no cry csca[>cd her ; she recovered
herself and stood erect, a little stunned, but with no fear ujioii her
face.

“You have all your rights he cried brutally, witli a

rough laugh that covered his shame at his own act. “You can
divorce me, Madame, ' i>ous le toit conjjujal^' aud ' violence ])rr-
wncllc* and all the rest; 3^'U have all 3^our rights. The law will
be with you.”

“ 1 shall not divorce you,” said Vere, while the great pain of
the blow, wliich had fallen on her breast, acluMl aud throbbed
through all her bod3^ “I shall not divorce you, I "do not take my
wrongs into the shame of public courts; but-— t go — or — she goes.”

An exceeding faintness tme over her, an a ;..ic was forced to sit

MOT&B. 853

down lest she 8hT)uld fall ^ain, and the air aroUtid her grew dark
and seemed full of nolee* rang loudly for her woman.

The Princess fell against the marble — an accident — she has
fainted/* he said hurriedly, and he escaped from the chamber. In
a few moments he was iwlth Jedimr 4e Sonnaz. In the utter
weakness of his submission the'^saination which she had
obtained over him he had gmw%|K) us^ to seeli her counsels in all
things, and at all times, that he told her all now* Her rago
extinguished hia own as one fire swallows up another,

“ Oh, imbecile ! " she screamed at him. " K Paul hear-^if the
world know — 1 am lost for ever I **

He stared at her with gloomy amaze.

“ Paul knows ; society too — they always have known-~- ”

** Oh, madman I ” she yelled at him, with her shining eye^ all
flame. “ They have known certainly, but they could still seem
not to know, and did so. How if once it be a public scandal Paul
will act, and the world will be with him I Gfood God ! If your
wife leave the house for me, I am ruined for ever I **

** I have given her what will keep her still."

“ You are a brute, you were always a brute. That is nothing
new. But your wife you do not know. She will get up though
she be dying, and go — ^now she once knows, now she has once said
that she will not stay where I am. Wait, wait, wait I you imbe-
cile ! Let me think ; your wife must not go. For her sake ? no !
good heavens, no ! — ^for mine.*'

Sergius Zouroff stood passive and uncomplaining under the
torrent of her abuse.

A scandal, a story for the papers, a cause for the tribunals ;
good heavens I have you and I lived all these years only to fall
into such helpless folly at the last ? ” she shrieked at him. ** Why
did you have mo come here? Paul will take Berthe and Claire
away, if ho do no more. Ob, you madman ! why did you not show
me your wife’s note before you went to her ? She is right, she is
always right, and you vrere a brute to strike her ; hut she wants
her divorce, of course, why not? she loves Oorr^, and she is a
woman afraid of sin. But she shall not go-^e must not go; I
will go sooner— ”

" You shall never go for her ”

1 shall go for myself. You are a brute, you are an idiot ; you
understand nothing, I will 1^ summoned-^Paul can be Ul, or
liuilhi^res on flre-^EKnneihing, anytHng, so that no one knows."

** You shall not go, you will humiliate me ; she will think "

What do I care mr 3 rour humiliation ? I care to avert my
own. Pshaw I Do you suppose 1 would stay an hour in this
house if your wife were out of it ? Do you suppose X would risk
my good na^oie, %pd make myself a scandal to the Faubourg ? Good
heavens I how little you know me after all these years. I shall
obey your wife and so : she is the soul of honour in her own odd

354

MOTHS.

way. She will say nothing if I go. My name shall not serve her
as a chisel to cut her fetters. Oh, what fools men are, what dolts,
wliat mules ! Why could you not bring her note to me, and ask
me what to do ? Instead, you must go and strike her I Do you
suppose her women will not know ? An accident I Who believes
in accidents? All the house will know it before noon. Oh, imbe-
cile! You w'ould marry a young saint, a creature from another
world — ^it was sure to end like this. Go, go ! or my women wull
see you, and it will bo worse ; go, and in a minute or two I shall
s(;n(l you \rord that Paul is dying. Go 1 I'liank you ? I ? — no,
why should I thank you? I never bade you be cruel to your wife
or strike her ; 1 always bade you treat her as a saint. She is one,
though how long **

** 1 struck her because slic insulted you.”

“'She was right enough to insult me; she is more right still
when she insults j^ou. Kow go ! ”

With sullen subjection he went; he learned what gratitude was
from the women of his world. In half an hour’s time there was
some coiifii^ioii in the well-ordered household of Felicite, for the
Duchet-se do Soiiiiaz, her children, their servants and her own, were
departing in hot haste ; it was said that Ic Due was lying ill of
sunstroke at their chateau of liuilhieres, in the department of
Morbiban.

Lying sick and blind on her bed, Vcrc heard the sound of the
liorscs’ feet.

“It is Madame la Duchesse who is leaving,” said her maid, who
from the other side of the closed door had heard all that had passed
between Sergius Zouroff and his wife.

Vore said nothing.

It was the first day of shooting; there was a groat breakfast, to
which many sportsmen of the neighbourhood came ; there were
battues on a large scale in the woods ; there were noise and move-
ment and the sound of many steps throughout the chateau, and
cut on the terrace, under her windows; now and then she heard
her husband’s voice ; then after a while all was still ; there was the
echo of distant shots from the w'oods, that was all. The day wore
away. Her w'omen told the ladies of the house-party that the
J’rinccss had a severe headache from a fall.

^ Towards evening she rose, and was dressed. The pain had
lulled in a measure, and the faintncf^s had passed away. She wished
to avoid comment, to cover the departure of Jeanne de Sonnaz.
XJmler the pale yellow roses of the bouquet at her bosom there was
a broad black bruise. The evening passed as usual. The house-
party suspected nothing; Vere’s women were discreet, and the
surprise, the sorrow, the bewilderment of Jeanne de Sonnaz at what
she had said were the sudden tidings from Ruilhiores iiad been so
natural, that the few people who had seen lier at her departure had
been deceived into believin^^ those tidings true. The evening passed

MOTHS,

355

smoothly; a litflo operetta in the little thenfre filled two of its
hours, and if tlie mistress of Felicitd looked pale and spoke little,
siie often did that. Zouroff never looked at liis wife and never
addressed her. But that also was not rare cnougli to bo any matter
for notice.

Yere underwent the fatigue of the niglit witliout faltering,
though she was in physical pain, and at times a sickly sense of
faintness came over her.

She was thankful when the men went to tlie smoking-i-oom,
the women to their hedchambers, and she was free to be alont? and
rest. On tlie table in her own room tliere lay a letter. 8he shud-
dered a little, for she recognised the loose, rude handwriting of her
husband. She was tired of pain and of insult, and she had little
hope of any other thing.

She sat down and road it.

“ You have h id your own way,” he wrote to her. “ The only
woman whorn I care for has been driven away by yon. ],)o not
su])])oso you have gained any victory ; you will pay the cost of the
affront you have dared to pass on her. I sliall not spcalc to you
again if we meet here a thousand times. I wish to avoid scandal
for the present at least, not for your sake, but for hers. So 1 write
to you now. You Avere about to leave tliis house. You wilh leave
it. As soon as this circle of guests breaks up, the day after to-
morrow, you will leave it. You Avill go to an esiato of mine in
i*oland, Walden and Ivan will accon)i)any you, and you can take
your women of cour.so. There you will remain. If you wisli to
escape, you can sue me for a divorce. Whenever you do so, 1 shall
not oi)pose it.

(Signcil) “ Sergius Nicolaivitcii, Ih iuce Zouroff.”

CHAPTER XXV.

In one of the most desolate parts of the country of Poland, there
were vast estates of the Princes Zouroff, conferred oii them at the
time of the partition of that unhappy land between Christian
sovereigns. They were vast, lonely districts, with villages few and
scantily populated ; immense jdains of grain and grass, and swamps
of reedy wildernesses, and dim, sandy forests of pines, straight, and
colourless, and mournful.

In the heart of all these— whose yield made up no slight sum
in the immense riches of the Russian Princes who owned, and spent
their produce on the pavement of Paris and St. Petersburg — there
stood a* large, lofty building, which had been once a fortifiea monas-
tery, &nd had served for a century as the scarcely ever visited castle
of the Zouroffs.

MOTHS.

356

It Was of immense extent. It had no architectural beauty ;
and, from its many narrow windows there was no outlook except
on one Bide to-ilje interminable woods of pine, and on the other
over the plains and marshes, through which a sullen, yellow river
cfeptl Within, it was decorated , as it had been decorated by Ivan
Zouroff at the time of the abdication of Stanilas Augustus ; Zouroff
having hanged the peasants on the pine trees, and made the corn-
lands red, before sunset and harvest-time, with blood, and in such
wise pleased his Imperial mistress.

From the gay, gorgeous interior, and the sunlit gardens and sea
terraces of the Norman chateau, Sergius Zouroif sent his wife to
this place, amidst the desolation of a province, then bleeding afresh
from the terrorism that strove to stamp out the ><ihilists.

Vere left Felicite without protest. F^licite was hers by settle-
men t,l)ut she did not urge that fact. She accepted the commands
of her husband, and travelled across Europe in almost unbroken
silence, accompanied by the attendants he had selected, by her
women, and by the dog Loris.

Wiien she had read her husband's letter, her first impulse had
been to refuse, and to disobey him; to go away with her own
jewels, and no single thing of his, and gain her own bread in some
way in solitude, as she had intended to do if Jeanne de Sonnaz had
remained in her house. Then, on later and calmer thought, she
accepted the banishment to Poland. Her pride made her willing
to avoid all scandal, her principle made her deem it still right to
obey her husband. She had asked him once to let her live on his
estates, out of the world; she considered she had the request
granted, though in a savage and bitter way. As to the conmtion
that he made her return dependent on — she lifted her head, and
drew herself erect, with the diaughty resolve that she was capable
of when stung and roused. Sooner than receive Jeanne de Sonnaz
in her house, or ever salute her as a friend, she said to herself that
she would live and die on the Polish plains. She did not answer ; ^
she did not protest or rebuke ; she neither wrote nor spoke to her '
husband in the fortnight that followed ; she entertained her guests
with her usual calm, cold grace, and when the last of them had
left, and the day of her departure arrived, she went away tran-
quilly, as though she went of her own will, and in her own way,
taking the dog Loris.

Zourofif had not been surprised. .

Though he could ill appreciate ner character, he did not mis^
understand it. “ She may break, she will never bend," he thought,
SLSif careful always of the outside observances of courtesy, he bade
her a courtly fiirewell before his household.

“ I am his prisoner ! ” she thought, as a week later she entered
the austere gloom of Szarisla. ]But sooner than release '^herself on
the terms he offered, she said in her heart that Poland should bo
her tomb, as it had been |h<^t of so many martyrs. Martyrs to

MOTHB. 857

an idea, the world said of those. It would have said the same of
her.

To her mother, and her friends, and all societ 3 ^,‘ Sergius ZoUroff
explained that his wife had long asked him to allow her to pass
some months on his northern, estates, to establish a school and im-
prove the moral condition cS. the peasantry, and at last he' had
consented ; it was an insanity, he added, but an innocent one ; she
was a saint.

“ Alas ! alas ! what has happened? ” thought his sister, “ what
lias happened ? Oh, why was 1 not at F61icit6 !

But she was the only one who feared or wondered — the Princess
Vera had always been so strange; and she was a saint.

To Jeanne de Sonnaz alone Zouroff said, with his gloomy eyes
full of sombre ferocity, “ Je vous vengeJ*

To her sister-in-law, and to the few to whom she ever wrote,
Vere said alwaj’s, in her brief letters, “ I am tired of the \rorld, as
you know ; I am glad of this retreat. It is desolate, and very dull,
but it is peace.”

Madame N61aguine, with her eyes sparkling with rage, and all
her little person erect in indignant dignity, reproached her brother
in a torrent of rebuke and censure. “ 1 imagine very well what
happened,” she said to him. You would have Jeanne de Sonnaz
under the same roof with Vera.”

** llespect my friend's name,” said Zouroff with savage authority,
or you and I never meet again. Vere is a saint, you say. Well,
she has her wish ; she goes into retreat. Would it please you
better if she were living with Corrdze ? ”

“ Correze — ^he is nothing to her 1” said Madame N61agnine hotly.

Zouroff. shrugged his shoulders. Some think otherwise,” ho
answered.

“ You are a brute, and you are a coward— a malignant coward ! ”
said his sister. “ You outrage your wife in every way, and you
must even dare to soil her innocence with suspicion.”

“ If it be suspicion only, time will show,” said Zouroff. “ Go
and live at Szarisla yourself, if you pity my .wife so much.”

But Madame Nelaguinc, who loved the world, and could not
live without its excitements and its intrigues, could not face that
■captivity in the Polish plain, though all the heart she had in her
yearned towards her brother’s wife.

“ Will you imprison her ali her life ? ” she cried.

Zouroff answered with impatience and fatigue, “ She will remain
there until she receives my friend with respect.”

“ You are a brute,” said his sister once more.

" I protect Jeanne, and I avenge her,” said Zouroff obstinately.
He fancied that his honour was involved in this defence of his
mistress: ' •

Jeanne ! ” echoed his sister with unutterable scorn. You
might as well defend and avenge your ^^uadroon.”

358 MOTES.

But she knew very well that she might as weft s^k to shake
the Ural Mountains at their base as change the obstinacy of her
brother.

Jeanne de Sonnaz had gained the empire over him of a re-
awakened passion ; the empire of a strong woman over an indolent
man ; of a mistress once deserted, and so doubly tenacious of her
hold. There was no beauty in her, and no youth ; but she had
the secret of dominion over men. She cowed this tyrant, she sub-
dued this man, who, to the self-will of long self-indulgence, had the
moral feebleness and inertness of the Slav temperament ; she railed
at him, jeered ‘at him, commanded him, yet fascinated him. lie
knew her to be worthless, faithless, never wliolly his, nor wholly
any one’s, yet she held him. “ After all, she is the woman I have
loved best,” he said to himself ; and believed it, because she had
the gift of exciting all that was worst in him, and subduing his
fierce impulses to her own will and whim.

When he had married, Jeanne de Sonnaz, who beyond all
things valued her position, and loved the world, had kept her peace
because she did not choose to jeopardise her name, or gain the ridi-
cule of her society. But she had always said to herself, “ Je mio
vengeraV*

She kept her word.

Yere was in her captivity at Szarisla; and the Duchesse de
Sonnaz — moving from one cliateau to another, and entertaining
circles of guests for the shooting at their own mighty place of Ituil-
liieros — ^said easily in the ear of the two or throe great ladies who
were her most iiitirnate associates, that there had been a scene at
Felicity ; she had tried to mediate between her old friend and liis
wife, but vainly, so far as peace went ; ZourolT had forbidden the
princess to receive Correze, and Correze had been found there at
evening in the gardens ; oh, there w^as nothing serious — Vera was
a young saint — but all the same there had been a scene, and Zouroff
had sent his wife to Szarisla.

^J’hen the two or three whom she told told others, and so the
talc ran, and grew as it ran, and was beli'eved. The world was
satisfied that the Princess Zouroff was in penitence in Poland.

“I think they were lovers many years ago. I remember, when
she was a mere child, seeing her in a boat with Correze ; she had
come from Havre with him ; her mother was distracted. I suppose
Zouroff and the N^laguino knew nothing of it,” said the Priuccsse
Helene Olgaroiisky, who made one of the brilliant autumn party
at Ixuilhieres where Zouroff was not.

“Be sensible, mon amij^ had said the Duchesse Jeanne ; “ now
your wife is away I cannot receive you — it would not do. Oh, in
winter, when we are all in Paris again, you may come and see Paul
as usual. But stay at Euilhieres you will not ; no-*-no-s*no. Three
times. No ! ”

She had no beauty, an^. no youth ; she had no lieart, and no

MOTHS. 859

conscience ; she liad been hia friend for fifteen years, and he usually
tired of any wonmn in less than fifteen days. Yet Sergius ZourolT
chafed at the interdiction to stay at Kuilhi^rcs, as though he \^er(j
eighteen, and she seen but an hour before ; and found himself
waiting with impatience for .the moment of his return to Paris,
with a vague sense that without this woman life was stupid, empty,
and purposeless.

He missed the goad to his senses and his temper with which
she knew so well how to giiide him, as the tamed elephant turned
loose misses the prick of the mahouPs steel. But she, who knew
that the elephant too long left to himself turns , wk I d, comes
never again to his mahout’s call, took care not to leave Zouroff too
much to himself. When the first shooting-party broke up at lluil-
hi^res, she left Due Paul with some men to slay the pheasants, and
went, for the sake of little Claire, who was not strong, to Arcachon
and to Biarritz.

There ZourotF went occasionally when she would allow him.
Tic went alone. He would no more have dared to take the mulat-
tress or any other newer toy wdthin sight of Jeanne do Soniiaz
now, than he would have dared to take them into his Czarina’s
j-iresence.

He had insulted his wife, but he dared not insult his mistress.
She spoke to him often of his wife.

“You cannot keep Vera in Poland all winter,” she said one
day in the fragrant alleys of Arcachon while Berthe and Claim
played before them with little silk balloons.

“ I shall do so,” he said gloomily.

“ Impossible ! They will call you a tyrant, an ogre, a fiend.
You must have her in Paris.”

“ iNot unless she receives you.”

“ Do not make me ridiculous, I beg of you,” she said with some
impatience. “You mean, — if she wdll consent not to receive
Correze.”

Zouroff was silent. He knew that he did not mean that. But
it was the fiction which his ruler had set up between them.

“ That is why you have sent her to Szarisla,” continued Jeanno
de Sonnaz. “ All the world knows that, though of course wo put
a fair face on it. The idea of talking of her not receiving mo. If
she did not receive mo, Paul would have to shoot you, which would
have its inconveniences — for you and Paul.’^

She laughed a little, and impaled a blue butterfly on the sharp
point of her tortoiseshell cone. Zouroff still said nothing ; a sort
of vague remorse touched him for a moment, as little Claire, whoso
balloon was entangled in a shrub, cried out, “Where is the prin-
cess ? Why is she never with us now ? She would get down my
balloon’. ^ Yoff are too cross.”

Zouroff released the toy, and said rpughly, “ Bun to your sister,
Claire, you tease us*”

360 ‘ MOTHS.

Madame Vera never said I teased,” said the child sullenly,
with a pout, as she obeyed, and joined her elder sister.

Where is Corrfize ? ” said her mother.

Horn em^Me I ” swore Zouroff, " how should I know where a
singer may be?”

It is very easy to know where a great singer is. Comets are
watched and chronicled. He was shooting in Styria, at Prince
Hohenlohe’s, last month. Why do you not know ? Do you have
no reports from Szarisla ? ”

“ He is not there,” said Zouroff angrily. He hated his wife, but
he was jealous,, of her honour, even though it would, in a sense,
liave gratified him to bo able to say to her, " You are no higher
than tlie rest.”

** He may not be there,” said the Duchesse de Sonnaz carelessly.
“ On file other hand, it is not very far from Styria to Poland, and
he is singing nowhere in public this autumn. Are your reports to
be trusted ? ”

“ Ivan would tell me anything,” said Zouroff moodily. “ He
writes me weekly of her health ; he says nothing happens ; no one
goes ”

‘‘Ivan is incorruptible, no doubt,” said Jeanne de Sonnaz, a
little drily.

“ What do you mean ? ”

“ You are always asking me what I mean ? I am no Sphinx,
my dear friend, I am very transparent. I mean, that since your
w ife is there, it seems to me improbable that she does not, or will
not, see Corr^ze ”

Zouroff ground his heel on the turf with impatience, but he
kept silent.

“ I think it would be worth your while to make sure that she
docs not see Corr^ze. I am quite aware that if they do meet, it
will be merely a knight meeting a saint, —

Pauvres couples, b, Tame haute,

Qu’une noble horreur dc la fayte
EmpSche seule d’etre heureux.

and that he will —

Baise sa main sans la presser :

Corame un lis facile b olesscr
Qui tremble b la moiadre secousse^

and all the rest. But still — if only as a moral phenomenon, it
jiiight be worth watching, and Ivan, on whom you depend, is,
though a very suprior servant, still only a servant.”

“ What w’ould you have me do ? Gfo myself ? ”

“Yes, I think you should go yourself. It would.prevent people
saying unpleasant things or untrue ones. You must have your wife
back in Paris, or you must-be very certain of all that passes at

M0TE8. 801

Szarisla, or you may be made to play a foolish part — a part you
would not like to play, when you have shut your wife up in it for
her safety.” *

“ Jeanne,” said Zouroff glocrmily, with his eyes fixed bn the turf
they were treading. There is no one to hear, and we may speak
as we mean ; Vera does not return to me until she consents to
receive you ; there is no question of her honour ; she will have
that intact as if she were in a convent ; she is made like that ; she
is no ‘ Us facile d blesser^^ she is made of steel. She knows every-
thing, and she will no longer know you. To protect your name I
exile her. She may live and die in Poland.” •

She heard him, knowing very well that he said the simple fact,
yet her eyes grew angry, and her teeth shut tight.

“ You are all imbeciles, you Bussians,” she said contcmpti\ousl 3 \
“ You have only one remedy for all diseases — Siberia I It does not
cure all diseases ; Nihilism shows that. Correze is your best friend,
since you want to be free.”

If he set foot in Szarisla he shall be beaten with rods 1 ”

Jeanne de Sonnaz, as they passed under the tamarisk trees,
looked at him coldly, and crossed her hands lightly on her gold-
headed cane as she leaned on it.

“ On my word I do not understand you. Are you in love with
your wife ? ”

“Jeanne!”

“ I do not accept divided homage,” said his friend with close-
shut teeth ; “ and jealousy is a form of homage. Perhaps the truer
form.”

“ One may be jealous of one’s honour—”

“ You have none,” said Jeanne de Sonnaz coolly. Your wife
told you so long ago. You have rank, but you have not honour.
You do not know what it means. My poor Paul does, but then
he is stui)id and ar?'icr^. 1 think if I told Paul to kill you, it
might perhaps arrange things — and then how happy they would be,
these —

Pura amants sur terre dgares ! ”

Zouroff looked at her fixedly ; his face grew anxious, sullen, and
pale.

“ Jeanne, say out ; what is it you want me to do ? ”

“ I want to reconcile your jrife and you, of course,” said Jeanne
de Sonnaz, driving; her cane through the yielding turf. “ That, of
course, first of all, if possible. If impossible, I would have you
divorced from her. Things, as they are, are ridiculous ; and,” she
added, in a lower breath, as the children and their balloons drew
near, running against the wind, “and they may in time compromise
me, which i do not choose to permit.”

Zouroff understood what she required of him; and he felt a
toward and a brute, as his sister had c^led him.

362 MOTSa,

The lily might not he easy to bruise^ but it was eiw^y to soil it.

« Oorrlso is certainly in Styria,” she added, os the children joined

the^n*

Zouroff stood looking down on the green turf and the bright
blossoms of the asters with moody eyes ; he was thinking— what
beast of prey was ever so hard of grip, sp implacable in appetite, as
a cruel woman ? And yet this woman held him.

He dared not disobey, because* he could not bear to lose her.

That autumn day, so sunny, balmy, and radiant in the sheltered
gardens and forests of Arcachon, was winter at Szarisla. Sudden
storms and hes? vy falls of snow had made the forests bare, the plains
white; the winds were hurricanes, the thermometer was at zero,
and the wolves ranged the lonely plateaux and moorlands in bands,
hungered and rash. Szarisla in autumn was colder and drearer than
Fclicild could fever be in midwinter, and the great, bare pile of the
Castle buildings rose black and sombre from out the unbroken world
of whiteness.

There was an equally unchangeable melancholy around ; it was
in the midst of a district intensely and bitterly national ; the Princes
Zourolf were amongst the most accursed names of .Poland, and the
few, far-scattered nobles who dwelt in the province would no more
have crossed the threshold of Szarisla than they would have kissed
the cheek of Mouravieff, or the foot of the Gospodar. Vere lived in
absolute solitude, and knew that it was as virtually also a captivity
as was ever that of Mary, or of Arabella, Stuart.

Of course she was the Princess Vera, the mistress of Szarisla
nominally and actually, but none the less she knew that every hour
was watched, that every word was listened to, and that, whilst there
was obsequious deference to all her commands, yet, had she ex-
pressed a wish to leave the place, she would have been reverentially
entreated to await the wishes of the Prince, and would not have
found a man in her stables bold enough to harness her horses for
her flight.

She had arrived there late one evening, and, despite the fires, tho
lights, the torches in the courts, the largo household assembled in
the entrance, a chill like that of the catacombs seemed around her,
and she had felt that living she had entered a grave.

Szarisla was an absolute solitude. The nearest town was a three
days* journey of long, bad roads ; and tho town, when reached, was
an obscure and miserable place. The peasantry were sullen and
disaffected. Tho tUstrict was under the iron heel of a hated gover-
nor, and its scanty population was mute in useless and gloomy
resentment. She had no friend, no society, no occupation save such
as she chose to make for herself; she was waited upon with frigid
ceremonial and etiquette, and she wixs conscious that she was
watched incessantly. Many women would have lost tfieir .senses,
their health, or both, in that bitter weariness of blank, chill, silent
days.

MOTM&

Vere, whoso childish training now stood hor in fair stead and
service, summoned all her courage, all her pride, and resisted Hho
depression that was like a malady, the lassitude that might bejtho
precursor of mental or bodily disease. She rode constantly, till the
snow fell ; when the snow came, and the frost, she had the wild
young horses put in the sleigh, and drove for leagues through the
pine woods, and over the moorlands. Air and movement were, she
knew, the only true physicians. Little by little she made her way
into the homes and into the hearts of the suspicious and disaffected
peasantry ; it was slow work, and hard, and thankless, but she was
not easily discouraged or rebuffed. She could do little, for she was
mot at all times in her wishes for charity by the adamantine barrier
of * the Prince forbids it ; * she had no more power, as she bitterly
realised, than if she had been his serf. But all that „ personal, influ-
ence could do, she did ; and that was not little. Site was the first
living creature who had borne the name of Zouroff that had not been
loathed and cursed at Szarisla.

Personal beauty is a rare sorcery, and when the fair face of the
Princess Vera looked on them through the falling snow in the forests,
or tlio dim light of their own wood cabins, the people could not
altogether shut their hearts to her, though she bore the accursed
name.

She was very unhappy ; w^earily and hopolcssfy so, because she
saw no possibility of any other life than the captivity here, or the
yet more arduous captivity of the great world, and in her memory
she always heard Uic song— ^ "

Si yous saviez que je vous aime,

Surtout si vous saviez comment !

But she would not let her sorrow and her pain make slaves of her.

The wild and frequent storms of wind and snow tried her most
hardly, because they mewed her in those gloomy rooms and sunless
corridors, which had seen so much human tyranny and human woe,
and the long, black nights, when only the howl of the hurricane
and the howl of the wolves^were heard, were very terrible ; she would
walk up and down the panelled rooms through those midnight
hours, that seemed like an eternity, and wondered if her husband
had wished to drive her mad that he had sent her here. Her Frencli
women left her, unable to bear the cold, the dreariness, the loneli-
ness ; she had only Russians and Poles about her. At times in
tliose lonely, ghastly nights, made hideous by the moans of the
beasts and the roar of the winds, she thought of the Opera-house of
Paris ; she thought of the face of Faust Then in that emptiness
and darkness of her life she began to r Alise that she loved Corr^ze ;
began to understand all that she cost to him in pain and vain
regret. * * "

If ‘she would receive Jeanne de Sonnaz she could go back ; go
back to the splendour, the colour, thejight of life ; go back to tho

^C4 MOTHS.

world where Correze reigned, where his voice was ^eard, where his
<3ye8^would answer hers. But it never once occurred to her to yield.

l^ow and then the truth came to her mind that Sergius Zouroff
had sent her to this solitude not only as a vengeance, but as a temp-
tation. Then all the strength in her repelled the very memory of
Correze.

“Would my husband make me like Jeanne de Sonnaz,’* she
thought with a shudder of disgust, “ so that I may no longer have
the right to scorn her ? ”

And she strove with all her might to keep her mind calm and
.clear, her body, in health, her sympathies awake for other sorrows
than her own.

She studied the dead languages, which she had half forgotten,
with the old priest of Szavisla, and conjured away the visions that
assaildd her in those endless and horrible nights, with the sonorous
cadence of the Greek poets*; and in the daytime, when the frost
had made the white world firm underfoot, passed almost all the
Jiours of light sending her fiery horses through the glittering and
rarefied air.

So the months passed, and it was midwinter. Letters and
journals told her that the gay world went on its course, but to her
it seemed as utterly alien as it could do to any worker in the depths
of the salt or the quicksilver mines that supplied his wealth to
Prince Zouroff. ^J’hc world had already forgotten her. Society only
said, “ Princesse Vera is passing the winter in Poland ; so eccentric ;
but she was always strange and a saint and then, with the usual
little laugh, Society added, “ There is something about Correze.**

But the world does not long talk, even calumniously, of what is
absent.

Prince Zouroff was on the boulevards ; he gave his usual great
dinners ; be played as usual at his clubs ; he entered his horses as
usual for great races ; the world did not concern itself largely about
his wife.

She was in Poland.

She committed the heaviest sin against Society, the only one it
never pardons. She was absent. No one had even the consolation
to think that she had her lover with her,

Correze was singing in Berlin.

Madame N^laguino, forcing herself to do what she loathed, went
across Europe in the cold, wet weather as swiftly as she could travel,
and visited Szarisla,

She strove to persuade her sister-in-law to accept the inevitable,
and return to the Hdtel Zouroff and such consolations as the great
world and its homage could Contain.

" Be reasonable, Vera,” she urged, with the tears standing in her
keen, marmoset-like eyes. “ My dear, society is made up* of women
like Jeanne de Sonnaz. Picccive her, what does it matter ? “ It is
2 iot as if you loved your hiy?band, as if your heart were wounded.

MOTHS.

365 -

Eeceive her. What will it^cost yon ? You need never even see her
in intimacy. Go to her on her day, let her come to you on yours.
Show yourself half an hour at her balls, let her show herself at yours.
That is all. What does it amount to ? what does it cost ? Nothing.”

“Little, no doubt,” answered Vere. “Only — ^all one’s self-
respect.”

And she was not to be changed or persuaded.

“ I shall live and die here, very likely,” she said at last, weary
of resistance. “ It is as well as any other place. It is better than
Paris, Your brother has sent me here to coerce me. Go back and
tell him that force will not succeed with me. I am not a coward.”

Madame Ndlagiiine, grieved and yet impatient, sliuddered, and
left the bleakness and loneliness of Vere’s prison-house with relief,,
and hurried homo to the world and its ways, and said impetuously
and bitterly to her brother, “Do not darken my doors, Sefgius,
while your wife is shut in that gaol of ice. Do not come to me, do
not speak to me. You are a brute. Would to heaven Jeanne do
Sonnaz were your wife ; then you would bp dealt with aright ! Are
you mad ? do you wish to make her faithless ? Can you think she
will bear such a life as that ? Can you leave a woman as young as
she without friends, lovers, children, and expect her to change to
snow, like the country you shut her in ? — are you mad ? If she
shame herself there any way — any way — can you blame her ? Can
you take a girl, a child, and teach her what the passions of men are,
and then bid her lead a nun’s life just when she has reached the full
splendour and force of her womanhood ? ”

“ She is a saint, you say,” ho answered with a smile ; and he and
his sister never spoke from that hour. In the boudoir of the Fau-
bourg St, Germain his friend knew well how to surround him with
an influence which little by little isolated him, and alienated him
from all who had the courage to speak of his wife.

Jeanne de Sonnaz had one set purpose, the purpose which she
had let him see in her at Arcachon ; and until she should succeed
in it she suffered no hand but her own to guide him.

The lily might have a stem of steel, and never bo bent; but
it could be broken.

Soilless though it might remain in its solitude amidst the snow,
it should be broken ; she had said it in her soul.

“ Ce que femm^ veut^ Vhomme was the proverb as her
experience read it. ^

All that there had been of manliness in Sergius Zouroff’s nature
resisted her still in this thing that she sought ; he still had a faith
in his wife that his anger against her did not change ; in his eyes
Vere was purity incarnate, and he could have laughed aloud in the
face of suspicion. To ruin by open doubt and calumnious accusation
a creature *ne to be sinless, seemed to him so vile that he
could not bring himself to do an act so base.

Ho sent her into captivity, and he kept her there without mercy.

366

MOTHS.

but to bera her in with falsehood, to dishonour her by affected belief
in her dishonour, was a lower deep than he could stoop to, even at
th9 bidding of his mistress.

That her solitude was the sharpest and most teirible form of
temptation he knew well, and he exposed her to it^ ruthlessly ;
willing she should fall, if to fall, she chose. But whilst she was
innocent, to assume and assert her guilty was what he would not
do. Nay, there were even times, when the fatal drug of Jeanne
de Sonnaz’s presence was not on him, that he himself realised that
he was a madman, who cast away the waters of life for a draught of
poison, a jewel for a stone.

But he thrust aside the thought as it arose. He had surrendered
himself to the will of his mistress. He had put his wife away for
ever.

CHAPTER XXVI.

Onk day, when the snow was falling, a traveller reached the gates
of Szarisla.

He was wrapped in fur from head to foot ; ho wished to see the
Princesse Zouroff.

‘‘No one secs her,” answered the guardian of the gates ; “ it is
the Prince’s order.”

“But I am a friend ; will you not take my name to her ? ”

“ I will not. No one enters ; it is the Prince’s order.”

To the entreaties of the stranger, and to his gold, the custodian
of the entrance-way was obdurate. In his boyhood he had felt the
knout, and he dreaded his master.

The stranger went away.

The next day was the Immaculate Conception. At Szarisla the
Catholic religion was permitted by a special concession of a French
Princess Zouroff, and its functions were still allowed by her de-
scendants.

There was no other church for the peasants than that which was
part of the great building, once the monastery of Szarisla. They all
flocked to it upon holy days. It was sombre and ill lit, but gor-
geous in Byzantine colour ana taste from the piety of dead Zouroff
princes. ,

The peasantry went over the snow through its doors; the stranger
went with them ; the mistress of Szarisla was at the midday mass,
as well as the household.

In the stillness, after thh elevation of the host, a voice arose, and
sang the Salutaris Hostia. ^

A warmth like the glow of summer ran through all^the veins of
Vere ; she trembled ; her face was lifted for one moment, then she
dropped it once more on hey hands.

MOTHB.

867

The peasants^nd the household, awe-struck and amazed, listened
with rapt wonder to what they thought was the song of angels ;
they could not see the singer. Kneeling as in prayer, with her face
hidden, the mistress of Szarisla, who was also the captive of Szaritia,
never moved.

Tlie divine melody floated through the dimness and the stillness
of the lonely Polish church ; the priest stood motionless ; the people
were mute ; some of them wept in ecstasy. When it ceased, tliey
prostrated themselves on the earth. They believed that the angels
of God wore amongst them.

Vere arose slowly and stood pale and still, shrouded from head
to foot in fur.

She looked towards the shadows behind the altar. There she
saw Correze, as she had known that she would see him.

He came forward and bowed low. Ills eyes had a timidity and
n fear in the wistfulness of their ap^ieal .to her.

They stood before each other, and were silent.

“ Is this how you obey me ? ” her glance said to him without
words.

“ Forgive me,” ho murmured aloud.

By this time the people had arisen, and were gazing at him,
M mazed to find him but a mortal man.

Vere turned to the priest, and her voice trembled a little ; You
m*o not angry, father ? Will you not rather thank this — traveller ?
— ho is known to mo.”

In Latin the priest spoke his admiration and his thanks, and in
Latin the singer replied,

• Vere looked at him, and said simply, “ Come.”

Correze obeyed her, and moved by her side. He dared not touch
her hand, or speak any word that might offend her. Ho could see
nothing of her face or form for the black furs that swept from her
head to her feet. She passed into the sacristy with a passing word
to tho priest. She throw the heavy door close with her own hands,
and let the furs fall off her in a heap upon the floor.

Them for the first time she looked at him.

“ Why do you come ? It is unworthy ”

He moved as if a blow had been struck him, his eyes, longing
and passionate, burned likc^tars; he too cast his furs down; he
stood before her with a proud humiliation in his attitude and his
look.

“ That is a harsh word,” Ife said simply ; “ I have been in this
district for weeks ; I have seen you pass with your swift horses ; I
have been in your church before now ; when you are imprisoned
here do you think I coul(i live elsewhere, do you think I could sing
in gay cities ? For some months I knew nothing ; I heard that you
were on.y^hr llussian estates, and nothing more ; when I was in
Styria-five weeks ago, I heard for the first time that you were in
Poland. A man who knew your husband spoke of Szarisla as no

368 MOTHS.

place foi a woman. Then I came. Are you offended? Was I
wrong? You cahnot.be here of your own will? It is a prison.
When I rang at the gates they tpld me it was the Prince’s order
thit you should see no one. It is a captivity 1 ”

Vere was silent.

“ You should not have come,” she said with an effort ; ‘‘lam
alone here ; it was ungenerous.”

The blood mounted to his face.

“ Cannot you make excuse ? ” he murmured. “ I know what
llussians are ; I know what their tyrannies are ; I trembled for you,
I knew no rest night or day till I saw the walls of Szarisla, and then
you passed by me in the woods in the snow, and I saw you were
Jiving and well ; then I breathed again, then all the frozen earth
seemed full of spring and sunshine. Forgive me ; — how could I lead
my life singing in cities, and laughing with the world, while I thought
you were alone in this hotbed of disaffection, of hatred, of assassi-
nation, whore men are no better than the wolves ? For the love of
heaven, tell me why you are here ! Is it your husband’s madness,
or his vengeance ? ”

She was silent still. He looked at her and stooped, and said very
low : “ You learned the truth of Jeanne de Sonnaz. Was it that ? ”
She gave a gesture of assent. The hot colour came into her
averted face.

Corrdze stifled a curse in his throat, “ It is a vengeance, then ? ”
“ In a sense, ]^crhaps,” she answered with effort. “ I will not
receive her. I will never see her again.”

And your banishment is her work. But why imprison your-
self? If you resisted, you would have all Europe with you.’*

“ I obey my husband,” said Vere simply, " and 1 am in peace
here.”

“In peace? In prison! We spoke once of Siberia; this is a
second Siberia, and he consigns you to it in your innocence, to spare

the guilty ! Oh, my God 1 ”

His emotion choked him as if a hand were at his throat ; , he
gazed at her and could have fallen at her feet and kissed them,
“Noble people, and guiltless people, live in Siberia, and die
there,” said Vere with a faint smile, “It is not worse for me than
for them, and the spring will come sopae time ; and the peasantry
are learning not to hate me ; it is a better life than that of Paris.”

“ But it is a captivity ! You cannot leave it if you would ; ho
does not give you the means to passHhe frontier,”

“ He would prevent my doing so, no doubt.”

“ It is an infamy ! It is an infamy. Why will you bear it,
wliy will you not summon the help of the law against it ? ”

“ If a man struck you, would you call in the aid of the law ? ”

“ No. I should kill him.” •„ .

“ When I am struck, I am mute : that is. a wdman’s courage ;
a man’s courage is vengeance, but ours cannot be.”

MfiTES. 869

Correzc signed : a heavy, passionate, restless sigh, as under a
weighty burden.

“ A man may avenge you,” he miUtered,

“ No man has any title,” she said a little coldly. I am the
wife of Prince Zouroff.”

A greater coldness than that of the ice world without, fell on the
heart of her hearer. He did not speak for many moments. The
^now fell ; the wind moaned, the grey dull atmosphere seemed,
between him and the woman he loved, like a barrier of ice.

He said abruptly, almost in a whisper : “ The world says you

should divorce him ; you have the right ”

I have the right.”

“ Then you will use it ? ”

“ No — no,” she answered after a pause. “ I will not take any
public action against my husband.”

** He wishes you to divorce him ? ”

No doubt. T shall be here until I do so.”

** And that will be ”

Never.”

“ Never ?”

She shook her head.

“ I think,” she said in a very low tone, “ if you understand me
at all, you understand that I would never do that. Those courts
are only for shameless women.”

He was silent. All that it was in his heart to urge, he dared
not even hint. A great anguish seemed to stifle speech in him.
He could have striven against every other form of opposition, but he
could not strive against this which sprang from her very nature,
from the inmost beauty and holiness of the soul that he adored,

^J'he salt tears rose in his eyes.

“ You have indeed kept yourself unspotted from the world 1 ” ho
said w^earily, and then there was silence.

It lasted long ; suddenly he broke it, and all the floodgates of
his eloquence were opened, and all the suficring and the worship
that were in him broke up to light,

“ Forgive me,” he said passionately. “ Na^, perhaps you will
never forgive, and yet speak I must. What will you do with your
life ? Will you shut it here in ice, like an imprisoned thing, for
sake of a guilty and heedless man, a coarse and thankless master ?
Will you let your years go by like beautiful flowers whose blossom
110 eyes behold? Will you live in solitude and joylessncss for sake
of a brute who finds his sport in shame ? Your marriage was an
error, a frightful sacrifice, a martyrdom ; will you hear it always,
will you never take your rights to liberty and light, will you never
be young in your youth ? ”

I am iiis v^fe,” said Vere simply ; ** nothing can change that.”
She shuddered a little as she added : “ God himself cannot undo
what is done.”

370

MOTHS.

'* And he leaves you for Jeanne de Sonnaz ! ” *

“ I rule my life by my own measure, not his. He forgets that
he [s my husband, but I do not forget that I am his wife.”

“ But why remember it ? He has ceased to deserve the remem-
brance — he never deserved it — never in the first hour of your
marriage to him.”

Vere's face flushed.

‘ If I forgot it, wliat should I be better than the wife of Paul
de Sonnaz ? ”

“ You are cruel ! ”

« Cruel?”.

“ Cruel — to me.”

He spoke so low that the words scarcely stirred the air, then ho
knelt^down on the ground before her and kissed the hem of her
gown, ^

“ I dare not say to you what I would say ; you are so far above
all other women, but you know so well, you have known so long,
that all my life is yours, to use or throw away as you choose.
Long ago I sang to you, and you know so well, I think, all that
She song said. I would servo you, I would worship you with the
love that is religion, I would leave the stage and the world and art
and fame, I would die to men, if I might live for you ”

She shook as she heard him, as a tall lily-stem shakos in a
strong wind ; she sighed wearily ; she was quite silent. SVas she
insulted, angered, alienated ? He could not tell. Ilis ardent and
eloquent eyes, now dim and feverish, in vain sought hers. She
looked away always at the grey misty plain, the wide waste, tree-
less and sunless, swept with low driving clouds.

** You knew it always?” ho muttered at length; “always,
surely?”

“ Yes.”

The single word came painfully and with hesitation from her
lips ; she put her hands on her heart to still its beating ; for the
^ first time in all her years she was afraid, and afraid of herself.

“ Yes,” she said once more. “ I knew it. lately — but I thought
you never would speak of it to me. You should have been sileni
always — always; if I were indeed a religion to you, you would
have been so. Men do not speak so of what they honour. Am I
no better than my husband’s mistresses in your eyes ? ”

She drew herself erect with a sqdden anger, and drew the skirt
of her gown from his hands ; then a shiver as of cold passed over
her, a sob rose in her throat; she stood motionless, her face covered
with her hands.

He wished he had died^a thousand deaths ere he had spoken,
lie rose to his feet and stood before her.

“ Since the day by the sea that I gathered you the'^rose, I have
loved you ; where is the harm ? All the years I have been silent.
Had I seen you in peace an^ in honour I would have been silent to

MOTHS. 871

my grave. I tave been a sinner often, but I would never have
sinned against you. I would never ha^e dared to ask you to stoop
and bear my sorrow, to soil your hand to soothe my pain.- Lsaw
you outrage, injured, forsaken, and your rivals the base cre^ures
that I could buy as well as he if I chose, and yet I said nothing ; I
waited, hoping your life might pass calmly by me, ready, if of any
defence or any use I could be. What was the harm or the insult in
that ? You are the golden cup, holy to me ; ho drinks from the
cabaret glasses ; can you ask me, a man, and not old, and with Kfo
in my veins and not ice, to be patient and mute when I see that,
and find you in solitude here ? ” •

He spoke with the simplicity and the strength of intense but
restrained emotion. All the passion in him was on fire, but ho
choked it into silence and stillness ; he would not seem to insult
her in her loneliness.

Vere never looked at him. All the colour had left her face, her
hands were crossed upon her breast above the mark which her
husband’s blow bad left there ; slic stood silent.

She remembered her husband’s words : ‘‘ All women are alike
when tempted.” For the first time in her pure and proud life
temptation came to her assailing her with insidious force.

“ What do you ask ? ” she said abruptly at last, Do you
know what you ask ? You ask me to bo no better a thing than
Jeanne de Sonnaz ! Go — my life was empty before ; now it is full
-—full of shame. It is you who have filled it. Go I ”

These are bitter words ”

“ They are bitter ; they are true. What is the use of sophism ?
You love me; yes; and what is it you would have me do? cheat
the world with hidden intrigue, or brave it with guilty ofirontery ?
One or the other ; what else but one or the other could love be now
for us? ”

Then, with a sudden recollection of the only pica that would
have power to persuade or force to move him, she added—

“ To serve me best — go back to Paris ; let Jeanne de Sonnaz
hear you in all your glory there.”

He understood.

Ho stood silent, while the large tears stood beneath his drooping
eyelids.

“ I would sooner you bade me die.”

“ It is so easy to die,” she |«iid, with a passing weary smile. “ If
— you love me indeed — go.”

** At once ? ”

She bent her head.

He looked at her long ; bo did not touch her ; ho did not speak
to her ; and he went. The door of the church closed with a heavy
sound behind 1dm.

His footsteps were lost upon the snow.

When the old priest entered the lading he found the mistress
of Szarisla kneeling before the. altar.

M0TJ1&

She femeiiied so lohg motionless tbnt ftt length the old man
^ Mghtened and daired to touch her.
j^he insensible.

Her household thought she had ihinted from the cold.

CHAPTER XXVn.

Ten days latei* Oorrftze sang in the midnight mass of Notre Dame.
The face of the Duchesse de Sonnaz clouded. “ C^est une impasse,**
she muttered.

The winter went on its course, and the spring-time came.

Corr^ze remained in Paris.

He sang, as of old, and his triumphs were many, and envy and
detraction could only creep after him dully and dumbly. For the
summer he took a little chateau in the old-world village of Marly-
le-Roi ; and, there, gathered other artists about him. I’he world of
women found him changed. He had grown cold and almost stern ;
amours he had none ; to the seductions that had of old found him
so easy a prey he was steeled.

In him, this indifference was no virtue. All women had become
without charm to him. The dominion of a noble and undivided
love was upon him ; that love was nothing but pain ; yet the pain
was sacred to him. His lips would never touch the golden cup, but
the memory of it forbade him to drink of any earthly wines of
pleasure or of vanity.

His love, like all great love, was consecration,

“ He will end in a monastery,” said the neglected Delilahs ; and
Sergius Zouroff heard them say it.

A sombre jealousy began to awaken on him as it had awakened
at the sight of the necklace of the moth on the breast of Vere.
What right had this singer to be faithful to the memory of his wife
while he to his wife was faithless ?

** Pur amant but terre 1 *•

muimured Jeanne de Sonnaz again, with a little laugh, when she
saw Oorreze passing out of the Operq^-house alone, and added in the
ear of Zouroff ; “ How he shames you ! Are you not ashamed ? ”

Zouroff grew sullen and suspicious. He began to hate the sight
of the face of Correze, or that of the letters of his name on the
walls of Paris. It seemed to him that all the world was filled with
this nightingale’s voice. As the horses of Correze passed him on
the Boulevards, as Oorrbze entered the St. Arnaud or the Mirliton,
when he was himself in either club ; when the crowds gathered and
waited in the streets, and h^ heard it was to see Oorreze pass by

MOTHS. m

after some fresfi success iu his ai*t, then Zourofi^ began to curse
him bitterly.

There was a regard in the eyes of Corr&zo when they glance(| at
his that seemed to him to say with a superb scorn : “lam faithful
to your wife. And you ? **

This hatred slumbered like a dull and sullen fire in him, but it
was a living fire, and the lips of Jeanne de Sonnaz fanned it and
kept it alive. With ridicule, with hint, with conjecture, with irony,
one way or another she stung him a hundred times a week with
the name of Corr^ze.

“ She is in Poland, he is in Paris ; what can you# pretend there
can be between them ? ” he said to her once, in savage impatience.
Then she smiled.

“ Distance is favourable to those loves of the soul. Did I not
quote you Sully Prudhomme’s

Purs amants sur terre egares ? ”

Once in that spring-time Zouroff wrote one line to his wife.

“ If you are tired of Szarisla you know on what terms you can
return to Paris ? ”

He received no answer.

He was perplexed.

It seemed to him impossible that she could have courage,
patience, and strength, to remain in that solitude.

“ It is obstinacy/* he said. “ It is stubbornness ! **

“It is love,” said Jeanne de Sonnaz, with a little smile.

Zouroff laughed also, hut he chafed.

“ Love ! for the wol \ cs or for the Poles ? ”

“ It i^ love,’* said his Mend. “ It is the same love that makes
Correze live like an anchorite in the midst of Paris, which makes
your wife live like a saint at Szarisla. It is their idea of love, it is
not mine or yours. It is the dissipation of the soul. Have you
never heard of it ?

Aux ivresses meme impunics
Vous preferez iin deuil plus beau,

Et VOS I'evres mcme au toAibeau
Attendent le droit d'etre unies.

When our poet wrote that ho saw, or foresaw, the tragic and frigid
loves of your wife and Corr^z^ What can you do? It is of no
use to swear. You cannot cite them aux trihunnux for a merely
spiritual attraction, for a docile and mournful passion that is en
deuiV*

Then she laughed and made a little grimace at him.

“ You cannot keep your wife in Poland all the same,” she said,
serionsl}', “ It .becomes ridiculous. It is not she and Correze who
are so; it is you.”

He knew that she meant what shejiad meant at Arcachpn. '

374

MOTHS.

She was that day in his house ; she had called! there ; she had
little Claire with her, whom she liad sent to play in the garden under
the budding lilacs ; she was about to fetch Due Paul from the Union,
beitg a woman who was always careful to be seen often with her
husband. Meanwhile she was in her friend’s own suite of rooms in
the Hotel Zouroff ; she was going about them, to and fro, as she
talked.

“ I must write a note to leave for Nadine,” she said as she went
to his bureau. “ Why have you quarrelled with Nadine ? It is so
stupid to quarrel. If one has an enemy one should be more intimate
with him, or }>er, than with any one else, and your sister is your
friend though she has an exaggerated adoration of Vera — sympathy
through dissimilarity, the metaidiysicians call it. Ciell what have
you here ? All women’s letters ! I will bet you the worth of your
whole* entries for Chantilly that the only woman whose letters are
absent from this coffer is your wife ! ”

She had seen a large old casket of tortoise-shell and gilded bronze.
The key was in the lock, it was full of notes and letters ; she had
pulled it towards her, turned the key, and was now tossing over
its contents with much entertainment and equal recklessness.

“ It is too scandalous,” she crieil,as she ran her eye over one here
and there. “If there are not one-half of my acquaintances in this
box I How ini])rudent of you to keep such things as these ! I never
wrote to you ; I never write. None but mad women ever write
to any man except their tailor. I shall take this box home ”

Zouroff, who only slowly awoke to the perception of what she was
doing, strode to the bureau with a cry of remonstrance. “ Joanne !
what are you about ? ” he said, as he strove to get the casket from
her. “ There is nothing that concerns you j they are all old letters,
those, very old ; you must not do that.”

“ Must not ? Who knows that word ? not I,” said his friend.
“ I shall take the box away. It will amuse me while they put on
my hair. Novels are dull; I will send you this thing back to-
morrow.”

“ You cannot be serious I ” stammered Zouroff, as ho tried to
wrest the box from her.

“ I was never more serious,” said his visitor, coolly. “ Do not
scream ; do not swear. You know I do what I like. I want espe-
cially to see how my friends write to my friend. It is your own
fault ; I thought men always burnt Jletters. I wonder if Paul has
a box like this. Adieu ! ” \

She went away, with the coffer iu .her carriage, to fetch her
husband on the Boulevard des Capucinps, and Zouroff dared not
arrest her ; and the caskot^of letters went homo to the Faubourg
with her.

In the morning she said to him ; “They were .reafty too com-
promising, those letters. You had no business to keep them. I
Lave burned them all, and piaire has got the coffer for her dpll’s

MOTHS,

375

troiisscaiu I never tliought mucli of my sex at any time ; I think
nothing now. And, really, they should no more bo trusted with
ink than children with firearms. Poohd why are you so furious ?
They were all old letters, from half a hundred different pedjble;
you have nothing to do with any one of the writers of them now ;
and of course I am as secret as the grave, as discreet as a sainUperey

With any other woman he would have let loose a torrent of
abuse ; with her he was sullen but apparently pacified.

After all they were old letters, and he could not very clearly
remember whose letters had been shut away in that old tortoise-
shell casket. t

thought men always burnt these things/' said Jeanne do
Sonnaz. “ But, indeed, if women are foolish enough to write them
they deserve to be unfortunate enough to have them kept. I never
wrote to any man, except to Paul himself— and Worth. "

“ You arc a model of virtue,” said her companion, grimly.

“ I am something better,” said his friend. “ I am a woman of
sense. Apropos, how long will this retreat in Poland last? It
cannot go on ; it becomes absurd. The world is already talking.
The place of tlie Princess Zonroff is in the Hotel Zouroff.”

“It cannot bo her place,” said Zouroff, savagely. “ She is — she
is — obdurate still. I suppose she is content ; the frost has broken,
the weather is good even there.”

Jeanne de Sonnaz looked him in the eyes.

“ Weather is not all that a woman of twenty requires for her
felicity. The whole affair is absurd ; I shall not permit it to go
oil. I say again, wliat 1 said last year at Arcachon, It may end in
<y:>mpromising me, and that I will not have. You must take your
wife back to your house hero, and live with her later at Fdlicite, or
you must prove to society that you are justified iu separating from
her ; one or the other. As it is you are ridiculous, and I — 1 am
suspected. Faut en

Zouroff turned away and walked gloomily to and fro the chamber.

“ I will not take her back,” he muttered. “ Besides — ^probably
— she would not come.”

He dared not say to his companion that ho could not insist on
his wife’s return without an open scandal, since she would for over
refuse to receive or to visit the Duchesse de Sonnaz, once her guest
and her friend.

“Besides, probably, she •would not come 1 ” echoed Jeanne de
Sonnaz with a shrill laugh that made his sullenness rage. “ My
poor bear I is that all your growls and your teeth can do for you ?
You cannot master a woman of twenty, who has nothing in the
world but what you gave her at you^ marriage. Frankly, it is too
Vidiculoq?. You must make a choice if you would not be the laugh-
ing-stock of society ; either you must have your wife here in Paris
before all the world, and I will bo the first to welcome her, or you
must justify your separation from one of the two.”

376

M0TE8.

** I shall do neither ! ”

**Then, mon am, I shall be very sorry indeed:, because TO have
been friends so long, but unless you do one or the othpr, and that
speehily, I shall be obliged with infinite regret to side with your
sister and all the House of Herbert against you. I shall be obliged
to close my doors to you ; I cannot know a man who is cruel to an
innocent wife. There ! you know I do what I say. I will give you
a week, two weeks, to think of it. Afterwards I shall take my
course according to yours. I shall be very sorry not to see you any
more, iny dear Sergius; but I should be more sorry if the world were
to think I su 2 )ported you in injustice and unkindness to Princess
Zouroff. Please to go now ; I have a million things to do, and a
deputation about my creche is waiting for mo downstairs.^

Sergius Zouroff went out of her house in a towering passion ;
yet it hever occurred to him to separate from his tormentor. Sho
had an empire over him that he had long ceased to resist ; he could
no more have lived without seeing Jeanne de Sonnaz than ho
could live without his dratights of brandy, his nights of gambling.
As there is love without dominion, so there is doiiiinioa without
love. ^

He knew very well that sho never wasted words; tliat she
never made an empty menace. Ho know that her calculations
were always cool and keen, and that when sho thought her own
interests menaced, slie was pitiless. Slio would keep her word ;
that he knew well. What could he do? It was imjjossiblo to
recall his wife, since he knew that his wife would never receive-
Jeanne de Sounaz. The presence of his wife in Paris could only
complicate and increase the difficulties that surrounded him ; had
he not banished her to Poland for that very cause? He cursed the
inconsistencies and the insolences of women. The submission of
his wife to his will and his command had softened his heart
towards her ; he h.ad vague impulses of compassion and of i)ardou
towards this woman who was so unyielding in her dignity, so
obedient in her actions, so silent under her wrongs. As the year
before, after he had found her the victim of her mother’s falsehood,
some better imimlsc, some tenderer instinct than was common with
him, had begun once more to move him towards that mute captive-
of his will at Szarisla. But Jeanne de Sonnaz had always been
careful to smother those impulses at their birth under ridicule ; to
arouse in their stead anger, impatieijce, and the morbidness of
a vague jealousy. Without the influence of Jeanne de Sonnaz
Zouroff would have loved his wife ; not nobly, because ho was not
noble ; nor faithfully, because ho could not be otherwise than
inconstant; but still, with there honesty of affection, more in-
dulgence, and more purity, than he had ever had excited iii him by '
any other creature. But perpetually, as that better impufse' rose,
she had been at hand to extinguish it by irony, by mockery, or
by suggestion. He loft her ho^ise, now, in bitter rage, which ixk

MOTHS. 37T

ju^tie^ rfiould fellen on her, out by habit fell instead upott
his absent %iflB. , Why could not Vere have been like any other of
the 'many high-ljprn maidens of whom ho could have made a
Princess Zduroff, and been indifferent and malleable, and wisely
blind, and willing to kiss Jeanne de Sonnaz on the cheek, as great
ladies salute each other all over the world, no matter what feuds
riiay divide- or rivalries may sting them ? Why must she be a
woman unfitted for lier century, made only for those old legendary
and saintly days when the bread had changed to roses in St.
Elizabeth’s hands ?

A devilish wish that he was ashamed of, even as it rose up in
him, came over him, without his being able to drive It away. Ho
wished ho could find his wife guilty. He know her as innocent as
children unborn ; yet almost he wished he could find her weak and
tempted like the rest.

His course would then be easy.

Throughout the adulation of the world she had remained un*^
tempted, and she remained so still, in that solitude, that diilness,
that captivity which would have driven any other to summon a
lover to her side before a month of that joyless existence had flown.
But then she had no lover. He was certain she had none. Not
all the mockery and the insistence of his mistress could make him
seriously credit any infidelity, even of thought or sentiment, in
Yerc. “ And had she one I would strangle him to-morrow,” ho
thought, with that vanity of possession which so sadly and cruelly
survives the death of passion, the extinction of all love. Justify
your sci)aration from her, said his friend; but how? Sergius
Zourofif was not yet low enough to accuse falsely a woman ho
believed from his soul to be innocent. lie was perplexed, and
bitterly angered against her, against himself, against all the world.
He had meant to break her spirit and her will by her exile ; he had
never dreamed that she would bear it in patience and in silence ;
knowing women well, he had fully expected that the strength of
her oi)position would soon wear itself out, that she would soon see
that to meet Jeanne do Sonnaz in society and exchange the-
commonplaces of courtesy and custom was preferable to a life in
the snows of the north, with no one to admire her loveliness, no
pleasure to beguile her days and nights ; be had thought that
one single week of the winter weather, with its lonely evenings
in that deserted place, would, banish all power of resistance in his
wife. Instead of this, she remained there without a word, even of
regret or of protest.

He was enraged that he had ever sent her into exile. He would
not retreat from a step he had once tal»cn *, he would not withdraw
fiom a position lie had thought it for his dignity to assume. But
he felt th^t he, had committed the worst of all errors in his own
sight ; an error that would end in making him absurd in the eyes-
of jthe w’orld. He could not keep Jjia wife for ever at Szarisla

378 MOTES*

society would wonder, her family would murmur ; even Lis Em-
press, perhaps, requiro* explanation : and what excuse could he
give ? He could not say to any of these, “ I separate from her be-
caus^j she has justly thought herself injured by Jeanne do Sonnaz.”

As, lost in sullen meditation, he went down the Rue Scribe to
go to his favourite club, he passed close by Oorreze.

Correze was walking with a German Margrave, who nodded to
Zouroff with a little greeting, for they were friends; Correze looked
him full in the face, and gave him no salutation.

The insolence (as it seemed to him) filled up the measure of his
wrath, «

“ I will slit the throat of that nightingale,” he muttered as they
passed.

At that moment a friend stopped him in some agitation. “ Good
heavens, have you not heard? Paul do Sonnaz is dead ; his horse
has thrown him just before the door of the club. He fell with his
head on the kerbstone ; his neck is broken.”

Zouroff, without a word, went into the Jockey Club and into
the chamber upstairs, whither they had borne the senseless frame
of the Due de Sonnaz, who had died in an instant, without pain.
Zouroff looked down on him, and his own face grew pale and his
eyes clouded. Paul do Sonnaz had been a good, simple, unaffected
man, hon prince always, and unconscious of his wrongs ; docile to
his wife and blinded by her, cordial to his friends and trustful of
them.

“ Poor simpleton ! he was very useful to me,” muttered Zouroff,
as he stood by tbc inanimate body of the man he had always
deceived. It was of himself he thought, in the unchangeable
egotism of a long life of self-indulgence.

When Zouroff went to his own house that day he found the
usual weekly report from his faithful servant Ivan. Ivan affirmed
that all things went on as usual and nothing happened, but
ventured to add —

“ The climate docs not scorn to suit the Princess. She rides a
great deal, but slic appears to lose strength, and the women say
that she sleeps but little.”

, ills sister came to him a little later in that day.

It is of no use for us to quarrel, Sergius,” she said to him.
‘*I shall do Vera no good in that way. I am anxious; very
anxious ; she vrrites to mo as of old, qpite calmly ; hut Ivan writes,
on the other hand, that she is ill and losing strength. Why do
you not recall her ? Paul do Sonnaz is dead ; his wife must for
some time he in retreat. Vera is your shield and safety now ;
without her, Jeanne would x»arry yoiu"

Zouroff frowned. , ^

** My wife can always return if she please,” he sajd evasively. .

Would she return ?

He could not see the Duch^se de Sonnaz, who was surroutnied

MOTHS.

379

hy her family, *and that of her hushaod, in the first hours of her
bereavement ; and without her counsels, her permission, he dared
do nothing.

“ I will write to Yera,” he prennised his sister ; hut she Could
not persuade him to write then and there. ^ “ Szarisla is healthy
onough,*' he answered, impatient of her fears. “ Besides, a woman
who can ride for many hours a day cannot be very weak.”

He knew.Szarisla was a place that was trying to the health of
the strongest by reason of its bitter cold springs and its scorching
summers, with the noxious exhalation of its marshes. But he
would not confess it. *

“ She could return if she chose,” he added, to put an end to the
remonstrances of the Princess Ndlagiiine. “ As for her health, if
you are disturbed about it send any physician you like that you
employ to see her ; she has never been so well as she was beiore the
birth of that dead child in Russia.”

“I shall not send a physician to her as if she were mad,”
answered his sister with anger.

“ Send Correzo,” said Zouroff with a sardonic little laugh which
he knew was vile.

“Would you had died yourself, Sergius, instead of that poor
imbecile, whom you cheated every hour that he lived I ”

Zouroff shrugged his shoulders. “ I regret Paul — pauvre gar-
^on I ” he said simply, and said the truth.

“ Why do you not regret your own sins ? ”

“ They are the only things that have ever amused me,” he
replied with equal truth. “ And I thought you were an esprit fort,
Kadine ; I thought your new school of thinkers had all agreed that
there is no such thing as sin any more ; nothing but hereditary
bias, for which no one is responsible. If we are not to quarrel
again, pray make me no scenes.”

“We will not quarrel ; it is childish. But you promise mo to
recall your wife ? ”

“ I promise you — yes.”

“When I shall have seen Jeanne,” he added in his own
thoughts.

Nadine Ndlaguine went to her own hous6 angered, dissatisfied
and anxious. She was a clever woman, and she was penetrated
with the caution of the world, as a petrified branch with the lime
that harden^ it. She smiled^ cheerfully always when she spoke of
her sister-in-law, and said tranquilly in society that she had not
Vera's tastes, she could not dedicate herself to solitude and the
Polish poor as Vera did. She kept her own counsel and did not
call in others to witness her |»in or ker dilemna. She knew tliat
the sympathy of society is chiefly curiosity, and that when it has
jSny title lo pity it is quite sure to sneer.

She held her peace and waited, hut her often callous heart ached
with a heavy regret and anxiety.

380 MOTES.

" She has so much to endure 1 she thought with hot tears in
her sharp keen eyes. “ So much, so much I — and it will pass her
patience. She is young ; she does not know that a woman must
neveV resist. A woman should only — deceive. It is Jeanne’s
work, all her work ; she has separated them ; I knew well that
she would. Oh, the fool that he is — the fool and the brute ! If I,
and Jeanne, and Lady Dorothy, and all the women that are like
us, wore eaten by dogs like Jezebel the world would only be
the better and the cleaner. But Vera, my lily, my i)oarl, my
saint ! ”

In Poland the slow cold spring was leaden-footed and grey of
hue.

In the desolate plains that stretched around Szarisla the
country slowly grew green with the verdure of budding corn, and
the yellow river outspread its banks, turbulent and swollen with
the melted snows.

She knew what it was to be alive, yet not to live. If it had
iMjt been for the long gallops over the plains through the cold air
which she forced herself to take for hours every day, she would
scarcely have known she was even alive. Little by little as time
wont on and the household found that she remained there, and
tliat her husband never visited her, the impression gained on all
tl ]0 peoi^le that she had been sent there cither as captive or as
mad ; and a certain fear crept into them, and a certain dislike to be
alone with her, and timidity when she spoke, came upon them.
She saw that shrinking from her, and understood what their fancy
about her was. It did not matter, she thought, only it hurt her
when the little children began to grow afraid too, and flee from her.

“ I suppose I am mad,” she thought, with a weary smile. “ The
world would say so, too ; I ought to go hack to it and kiss Jeanne
de Sonnaz on both cheeks.”

But to do so never occurred to her for one moment as any
temptation.

She was made to break, perhaps, but never to bond.

One day in the misty spring weather, ' which seemed to her
more trying than all the ice and snow ol winter, there came over
the plains, now bright with springing grasses or growing wheat, a
troika, with hired horses, that was pulled up before the iron-bound
doors of Szarisla.

Prom it there descended a very lonely woman, with an imperti-
nent, delicate profile, radiant, audacious eyes, and a look that had
the challenge of the stag with the malice of the marmoset.

When the servants on guard opposed her entrance with the
habitual formula, The Prince forbids it,” she thrust into their
fiices a card signed Sergius Zouroff.

On the card was written, “ Admit to Szarisla the Dachess of
Mull.”

The servants bowed to the ground, and ushered the bearer^ o£

MOTES. 881

that iiTesistibtJ order into the presence of their mistress, without
preparation or permission.

Vere was sitting at a great oak table in one of the high embra-
sured windows ; the dog was at her feet ; some Greek books f^ere
open before her ; the white woollen gown she wore fell from her
throat to her feet, like the robe of a nun ; she had no ornament
except her thick, golden hair coiled loosely about her head.

Before she realised that she was not alone her cousin’s wife
stood before her, brilliant in colour as an enamel of Petitot, or a
Saxe figure of Kaendler ; radiant with health, with contentment,
with animation, with the satisfaction with all existent things,
which is the most durable, though not the most delicate, form of
human happiness. Vero rose to her feet, cold, silent, annoyed,
angered ; she was in her own house, at least her own since it was
her husband’s ; she could say nothing that was discourteous ; she
would say nothing that was welcome. She was astonished and
stood mute, looking down from the height of her noble stature on
this brilliantly-tinted, porcelain-like figure. For the only time in
all her life she who was Pick-me-up in the world of fashion was
made nervous and held mute.

She was impudent, daring, clever, vain, and always successful ;
yet, for the moment, she felt like a frightened child, like a chidden
dog, before the amazed cold rebuke of those grand, grey eyes that
she had once envied to the girl Vere Herbert.

“ Well ! you don’t seem to like the look of me,” she said at
last, and there was a nervous quiver in her high, thin voice. You
can’t be said to look pleased no-way, and yet I’ve come all this way
only just to see you; there aren’t many of the others would do as
much.”

“ You have come to triumph over me ! ” thought her hearer,
but, with the stately old-world courtesy that was habitual to her,
she motioned to her cousin’s wife to be seated near her and said,
coldly—

“ You are very good ; I regret that Szarisla can offer you little
recompense for so long a journey. My cousin is well ? ”

** Frank’s first rate, and the child too,*’ said Fuschia, Duchess
of Mull, with a severe effort to recover the usual light-heartedness,
with which she faced all things and all subjects, human and divine.
** I called the boy after you, you know, but you never took any
notice. Goodness ! if it’s not like a convent here ; it’s a sort of
Bastille, isn’t it, and the winaows are all barred up, and I thought
they’d never have let me in ; if I hadn’t had your husband’s order
they never would have done till the day of doom ; it’s very hard
on you.” •

“My husband sent you here?” said Vere, with her teeth
closed ; sbfe felt^powerless before a studied insult.

“ Sent me ? My, no 1 I don’t do things for people’s sending,”
said the young duchess, with some asperity, and her natural courage

882

M0TH8.

reviving in her. “ We were hound to come to Berlin, because of
Ronald Herbert’e marriage ; ho is marrying a Prussian princess —
didi^’t you know of that? Doesn’t your husband forward you on
your letters ? And I said to myself, when I’m as near as that, I
will go on to Poland and see her, so I got that order out of your
husband ; he didn’t like it, but he couldn’t say No very well anyhow
we saw him as we came through Paris.”

You were very good to take so much trouble,” said Vcre, but
her eyes said otherwise. Her eyes said, “Why do you pome to,
offend me in my solitude and insult me in my captivity ? ”

But in trffth her visitor was innocent of any such thought.
Human motives arc not unmixed, and in the brilliant young duchess
there had been an innocent vanity — a half-conscious conceit — in
showing this high-born and high-bred woman, who had always
disdained her, that she was above revenge and capable of a nolle-
action. But beyond all vanity and conceit were the wish to make
Vcre care for her, the indignation at tyranny of a spirited temper,
and the loyal impulse to stand by what she knew was stainless and
as^jcrscd.

Fuschia Mull, having once recovered her power of speech, was
not silenced soon again. She had seated herself opposite the high
window, her bright eyes studied the face of Vere with a curiosity
tempered by respect and heightened by wonder; she could flirt
with princes and jest with sovereigns, and carry her head high in
the great world with all the insolence of a born coquette and a born
revolutionary, and since tho day when she had become a duchess
she had never ceased to assert herself in all the prominence and all
the audacity that distinguished her ; yet before this lonely woman
she felt shy and afraid.

“ You aren’t a bit glad to see me,” she said, with a little tremor
in ’'her words, that flowed fast from the sheer habit of loquacity.
“ You never would take to me. No ; I know. You’ve never for-
given me about that coal, nor for my marrying your cousin. Well,
that’s natural enough; I don’t bear malice. There wasn’t any
cause you should like me, though I think you’d like the baby if
you saw him ; he’s a real true Herbert, Init that’s neither here nor
there. I wanted to see you because you know they say such things
in Paris and London, and all the others are such poor dawdles *,
they’ll never do anvthing. Even Frank himself says I shouldn’t
interfere between husband and wifa; but people always say you
shouldn’t interfere when they only mean you may do yourself a
mischief, and I never was one to he afraid ”

She paused a moment, and her bright eyes roamed over the
dark oak panelled monastifc chamber, with its carpet of lambs’
skins, and beyond its casements the flat and dreary plains and tho
low woods of endless firs. . * ‘

“ My she said, with a little shiver, “ if it aren’t worse than
a clearin’ down West I Wel\ he’s a brute, anyhow— ~ ”

Moms.

383

•

Vere looked at her with a regard that stopped her*

It is my own choice/* she said, coldly.

Yes 1 1 know it is your own choice in a 'way/* returned the
other with vivacity; “ that is what I wanted to say to you. I^told
Frank the other day in Berlin, ‘She never likal rne, and there
wasn't any particular reason why she should ; but I always did
like her, and I don't mean to stand still and see her put upon.’
You don’t mind my speaking so ? — you are put upon because you
are just too good for this world, my dear. Don’t look at me so with
your terrible eyes ; I don’t mean any offence. You know they say
all sorts of things in society, and some say one thing and sorno
another; but I believe as how the real fact is this, isn’t it? Your
husband has sent you here because you would not receive Madame
do Sonnaz ? ”

“ That is the fact — yes.”

“Well, you are quite right. I only know if the duke — but
never mind that. You know, or perhaps you don’t know, that in
the w^orld they say another thing than that; they say Prince
Zouroff is jealous of that beautiful creature, Corroze — - ”

“ I must request that you do not say that to me.”

“ Well, they say it in your absence, some, I thought I’d better
tell you. That Sonnaz woman is a bad lot ; poisonous as snakes in
a swamp she is, and of course she bruits it abroad. I cannot make
out what your husband drives at; guess he wants you to divorce
him ; but it aren’t him so much as it’s that snake. Men arc always
what some woman or other makes them. Now you know this is
what I came to say. I know you don’t like mo, but I am the wife
of the head of your father’s house, and nothing can change that
now, and in the world I’m some pumpkins — I mean. they think a
good deal of me. Now what I come to ask you is this, and the
duke says it with me with ail his heart. We want you to come and
live with us at Castle FIcrbert, or in London, or wherever we are.
It will shut people’s mouths. It will nonsuit your husband, and
you shall never see that hussy of the Faubourg in my house, tliat
1 promise you. Will you do it ? Will you ? Folks mind me, and
when I say to them the Princess Zouroff stays with me because
her husband outrages her, the world will know it’s a fact. That’s

BO.”

She ceased, and awaited the effect of her words anxiously and
even nervously ; she meant \^ith all sincerity all she said.

Into Vere’s colourless face a 'warmth carao ; she felt angered,
yet she was touched to the quick. She could not endure the pity,
the protection ; yet the honesty, and the hospitality, and the frank
kindness moved her to emotion.

None qf her own friends, none of those who had been her debtor
for many an act of kindness or hour of pleasure, Irad ever thought
to coine to her in her exile; a^d the Journey was one long and
tedious, involving discomfort and se^-sacrilice, and yet had had no

^84 MOTES.

terrors for' tliis woman, whose vulgarities she had always treated
with disdain, whose existence she had alwaj's ignored, whose rank
she had always refused to acknowledge.

-You aren't angry ? ** said the otiier, humbly,

“ Angiy ? Oh no ; you have been very good."

Then you will come with us ? Say ! Your cousin will be as
glad as 1.”

She was silent.

“ Do come ! " urged the other with wistful eagerness. ^Va
are going straight home. Come with us. Of course yonr mother

ought to bo the one, but then she’s ; it’s no use thinking of

her, and, besides, they wouldn’t believe her ; they’ll believe me. 1
don’t lie. And you know I’m an honest woman. 1 mean to be
honest all my days. I flirt, to he sure, but, Lord, what’s that !
I’d never do what my boy would be sorry I had done, when he
grows big enough to know. You needn’t be afraid of me. I aren’t
like you. I never shall be. There is something in the old countries,
— but I’ll be true to you, true as steel. Americans aren’t mean ! ’’

She paused once more, half afraid, in all her omnipotent vanity,
of the answer she might receive.

Vere was still silent. The great pride natural to her was at
war with the justice and generosity that were no less her nature.
She was humiliated; yet she was deeply moved. This woman,
whom slio had always desjnsed, had given her back kindness for
imkindncss, honour for scorn.

With a frank and gracious gesture she rose and put out lier
hand to her cousin’s wife.

** I thank you. I cannot accept your offer, but I thank you
none the loss. You revenge yourself very nobly ; you rebuke me
very generously. I see that in the j)ast I did you wrong. I beg
your pardon.’’

Into the radiant, bold eyes of Fuschia Mull a cloud of sudden
tears floated.

She burst out crying.

When she went away from Szarisla in the, twilight of the sultry
day she had failed to persuade Vere, yet she had had a victory.

“ You are a saint ! ’’ she said, j)assionatoly, as she stood on the
threshold of Vere’s prison-house. “ You are a saint, and I shall
tell all the world so. Will you give me some little thing of your
own just to take home to my boy fr<^m you ? I shall have a kind
of fancy as it will bring him a blessing. It’s nonsense maybe, hut
^till ”

Vere gave her a silver crops.

The long, empty, colowtless days went by in that terrible
monotony which is a blank in all after-remcmbrance of Jt. Since
the footsteps of Corr^ze had passed away over the.^ snoV a silence
like death seemed to reign rOund her. She noticed little that was
around her ; she scarcely kept, any count of the flight of time ; it

MOTES.

385

gccmed to her that she had died when she had sent him from her
to the world — the world that she would never revisit. Fur she
knew her husband too well not ’to know that he would never
change in the thing he demanded, and to purchase freedom byjtho
humiliation of public tribunals* was impossible to a woman reared,
in her childhood, to the austere tenets of an uncomi)romising
honour, an unyielding pride.

“ I can live and die here,” she mused often. “ But I will never
meet his mistress as my friend, and I will never sue for a divorce.”

When Sergius Zourolf from time to time wrote her brief words,
bidding her reconsider her choice, she did not consider for a.
moment ; she tore up his message.

The worst bitterness of life had piussed her when she had bidden.
Correze depart from her. After that, all seemed so easy, so trivial,
so slight and poor.

if her linsband had sent her into poverty and made her work
with her hands for her bread, it would have sconicd no matter to
h(T. An the Slimmer came, parcliing, dusty, unbealth)'’, after tlie
bitterness of the cold and the dampness of the rainy season, her
attendants grew vaguely alarmed, she looked so thin, so tall, so
shadowy, her eyes had such heavy darkness under them, and she
slept so little. As for the world, it had already almost forgotten
her; she was bcautifu], hut strange; slio had always been strange,
society said, and she chose to live in Poland.

She thought of society now and then, of all that hurry and
fever, all that fuss and fume of xiroccdencc, all that insatiable appe-
tite lor new things, all that frantic and futile effort at distraction,
all that stow of calumny and envy and conllict and detraction
wliich togctlicr make up the great world ; and it all seemed to her
as far away as the noise of a village fair in the valley seems to the
climber who stands on a mountain Ijcight. Was it onl}’’ one year
ago that slio had been in it? — it seemed to her as if centuries had
passed over her licad, since the gates of Szarishi had closed behind
her, and its jdains and its jiinewoods bad jjartod her from tho
world.

Even still tho isolatiou was j)recioiis to her. She accej^ted it
with gratitude and huniility.

If J were seeing him daily in the life of Paris,” she thought,
who can tell — I might fall into concealment, decej^tion, falsehood
'~I might be no stronger than other women, 1 might learn to
despise myself.” •

And the gloom and the stillness and tho lonely unlovely land-
scapes, and the long empty joyless da3^s, were all welcome to her ;
tliey saved her from herself. Her loveliness was unseen, her youth
was wasting, her portion was solitude, t)ut she did not complain,
since she h'^d accepted this fate she did not murmur at it. Ifer
womcn^ wdhdcred at her patience as tho exiled court of exiled
sovereigns often wonder at their rulers' fortitude.

386

M0TE8.

One day at the close of the month of May, she sat by herself in
the long low room, which served her as her chief habitation. She
had come in from her ride over the level lands, and was tired ; she
wsc: very often tired now; a dull slight rain was veiling the horizon
always dreary at its best ; the sky was grey, the air was heavy
with mist.

It was summer-time, and all the plains were green with grass
and grain, but it was summer witliout colour and without warmth,
dreary and chilly : it was seven o’clock ; the sun was setting behind
a niass of vapour ; she thought of Paris at that hour at that season ;
with the hoiAcward rolling tide of carriages, with the noise, the
laughter, the gaiety; with the light hegiiming to sparkle every-
where before the daylight had faded, with music on the air, and the
scent of th(j lilacs, and the last glow of the sun shining on the
ruine'd Tuilerics. Had she ever been there with the crowds looking
after her as her horses went- down the Champs Elysecs ? — it seemed
impossible. It seemed so far awa}^

By the ])apers that came to her she knew that Correze was still
there; there in the city that loved him, whore liis glance was
seduction, and his hours wore filled with vii^tories ; she knew that
ho was there, she read of the little chateau at IMnrly, she compi’o-
hoiided wliy ho chose to live so, in the full light of ])uhlicity, for
her sake. She thouglit of him this evening, in that dull grey light
which .spread like a veil over the mournful plains of Poland. Would
ho not Ibrgct as the world forgot her V wliy not ? {She had no pride
for him.

At til at moment as the day declined, a servant brought her
letters.

Ijctters came to Szarisla but twice in the week, fetched by a
hor.semaii from the little town. The first letter she took out of tlie
leather sack was from her husband. It was very brief. It said
merely —

“ Paul de Sonnaz died suddenly last week. If you will consent
to pay a visit of ceremony and respect to his wife in her retireineiit
at KuilhiGres, I sliah welcome you to I’aris with pleasure. If not,
if you still choose to disobey me and in*siilt me, you must remain
at Szarisla, which I regret to hear from Ivan does nob a])pear to
suit your hcalili.”

There was nothing more except his signature.

The letter was the result of the promise he had given to his
sister. Vere tore it in two.

^ The next she opened was a long and tender one from Nadine
Nelaguine, urging deference to his wishes, and advising concession
on this point of a mere vicit of condolence to lluilhieros, with all
the arguments that tact and affection and unscrupulousness could
together supply to the writer. . ,

The next three or four were unimportant, the last was a -packet
addressed in a hand unknown to her.

MOTES.

387

She opened it without attention.

Out of the cover fell three letters in her mother’s handwriting

Wondering and aroused, she read them. They were lettersleii
years old. Letters of her mother to Sergius Zouroff ; letter? for-
gotten when others were burned the week before his marriage;
forgotten and left in the tortoise-shell casket.

At ton o’clock on the following night as Prince Zouroff sat at
dinner in the Grand Circle a telegram was brought to him. It was
from his wife.

“ Never approach me : let me live and die here ”

CHAPTER XXVIIL

S25ATIISLA liad hidden many sad and many tragic lives.

It hid that of Verc.

To her husband she had ]'crished as utterly as though she was
dead. .From remote districts of the north, news traveds slowly ;
never travels at all, unless it be expressly sent; Verc had so seldom
writt(!n to any one that it scarcely seemed strange that she now
never wrote at all. The world had almost ceased to inquire for her;
it tliouglit she liad withdrawn herself into retirement from religious
capric(3, or from morbid sentiment, or from an unreturned passion,
or that she had been sent into that exile for some fault ; whciKiver
women spoke of her they la’cfcrred to think this, they revived old
rumours. For the rest, silence covered her life.

Her sister-in-law wept honest tears, reviled her brother with
honest rage, hut tlien ])laycd iimsical intricacies, or gambled at
bezique, and tried to forget that the one creature her cynical heart
yearned over, and sighed for, was away in that drear captivity in
the Ikdish plains.

If 1 wont and lived with her,” thought Nadino Ntilaguine, “ I
should do her no good, I should not change her : slm is taillec dans
le marhre, I should alter her in nothing, and I slioidd only be
miserable myself.”

In country houses of England and Scotland her mother w’cnt
about through summer and autumn unchanged, charming, popular,
and said with a little smile a sigh, “ Oh ! my dear ciiild — you
know she is too good — really too good — wastes all her life in Poland
to teach the children and convert the Nihilists ; she is happiest so,
she assures mo ; you know she was always so terribly serious ; it
was Buhner that ruined her I ”

And sho believed wVat she said.

Jeann^ de Sonnaz mourned at Ruilhi^rcs in the austere severity
of a great lady’s widowhood in France; heard mass every day with
her little _^blonde and brown-headcdi^irls and boys about her in

388 MOTBB.

solemn tetreat, yet kept her keen glance on the world, \\hich she
had quitted pertorce for a space, and said to herself, annoyed and
baffled, When will hp cease to live at Marly ? ”

^or ’Corr^ze was always there.

Sergius Zourolf had been to llussia. He only went to Livadia,
but thfe world thought He had been to his wife. He returned, and
kppt open housfe,,at .a superb chas&e he had bought in the Ardennes.
AVheO. people askcd'him’for hia wife, he answered them briefly’ tliat
she was well ; shp preferred the north.

‘F^licitd was closed.

The old pensant stood by her wall of furze and looked in vain
along the field-paths under the aj^ple-blossonis.

‘'Now the lark is dead,*' she said to her son, “neither of the
two comes near.”

Sd the months fled away.

When the autumn was ended, Correze, who was always at his
little chateau with other artists about him, said to himself, “ Have
1 not done enough for obedience and honour ? I must sec her,
though she shall never see me.”

Correze lived his life in the world obedient to her will, but ineu
and women went by him like shadows, and even Ins art ceased to
liave power over him.

Ho was a supremo artist still, since to the genius in him there
was added the culture of years, and the facility of long habit. But
the joy of the artist was dead in him.

All his heart, all his soul, all his passion, were with that lonely
life in the grey plains of Poland, whoso youth was passing in soli-
tude, and wlioso innocence was being slandered by the guilty.

“1 obey her,” bo thought, “and what is the use? Our lives
will go by like a dream, and we shall be divided even in our graves;
the world will alwaj^s think she has some sin — she lives apart from
her husband ! ”

He chafed bitterly at his doom ; he grew feverish and nervous ;
ho fancied in every smile there was a mockery of her, in every
word a cal in nny: once he took up a imhlic print whicli spoke of
himself and of his retreat at Marly, and*’ which, with a hint and
a veiled jest, quoted that line which Jeanne de Sonnaz had by a
laugh wafted through Paris after liis name —

Pur amant sur terre (?gare 1

f

Correze crushed the paper in his hand, and threw it from him
and went out ; he] longed to do something, to act in some way, all
the impetuosity and ardour of his temper were panting to break
from this .thraldom of silenct and inaction.

He would have struck Sergius Zouroff op the cheek the sight
of all Paris, but he had no title to. defend her.

He would only harm her more.

She was the wife of Zourqff, and she accepted her exile at her

MOm&. 889

husband's hands ; he had no title to resent for her “what she would
not resent for herself.

“lam not her lover,” he thought bitterly ; “lam nothing but
a man who loves her hopelessly, uselessly, vainly.”

It was late iri autumn, ^nd ghastly fancies seized him, vague
terrors for, her, ih at left him no^lcep find no'rcst^ be^an to visit
him. Was she really at Szarisla? Was she* indeed iiYing? He
could not tell. There were disturbances and bloodshed in* the dis-
affected provinces; winter had begun there in Pciland, the long,
black silence of winter, which could cover so many napiclcss graves ;
he could bear absence, ignorance, approliension, no longer ; he went
to sing twenty nights in Vienna, and ten in Moscow.

“ There I shall breathe the same air,” he thought.

He went over the Alps, by way of the Jura, and Dauphire ; be
thought as ho passed the peaceful valleys and the snow-covered
summits that had been so familiar in childhood to him —

“ If I could only dwell in the mountains with her, and let the
world and fame go by ! ”

Then he reproached himself for even such dishonour to her as
lay in such a thought.

“What am I that she should be minc?'^’ ho mused. “I have
been the lover of many women, I am not worthy to touch her
hand. The world could not harm her — would I ? ”

In Vienna ho had brilliant successes. lie thought the people
mad. To himself ho seemed for ever useless, and powerless for art,
his voice sounded in liis cars like a bell muffled and out of tunc.
The cities rejoiced over him and feasted and honoured him ; but it
seemed to him all like a dream; he seemed only to hear the beat-
ing of his own heart that ho wished would break and be at peace
for ever.

From Moscow ho passed away, under public pica that he was
bound for Germany, towards those obscure, dull, unvisited idains,
that lie towards the borders of East Prussia and the Baltic Sea, and
have scarce a traveller to notice them, and never a poet or historian
to save them from the notions’ oblivion, but lie in the teeth of the
north wind, vast, ill-populated, melancholy, with the profound un-
changeable wretchedness of a captive people.

Oiico more he saw the wide grey plains that stretched around
Szarisla.

For days and weeks he lingered on in the miserable village which
alone afforded him a roof and bed ; he passed there as a stranger
from the south buying furs ; he waited and waited in the pinewoods
merely to see her face. “ If I can see her once drive by me, and she
is well, I will go away,” ho said to liimself, and he watched and
waited. J^ut she ncvcricame.

At length he spoke of her to the archimandrite of the village, as
a traveller might of a great princess of whom hearsay had told him.
Hcf learned that she was unwell, andflrarely left the house.

390 MOTES.

Corr&ze, as he heard, felt his heart numb with fear, as all nature
was numbed with frost around him.

Ue could not bring himself to leave. The village population
bcga^ to speak with wonder and curiosity* of him ; he had bought
all the fur they had to sell, and sent them through into Silesia ; they
knew he was no trader, for he never bargained, and poured out his
roubles like sand ; they began to speak of him, and wonder at him,
and he knew that it was needful he should go. But he could not ;
he lived in wu'clchcdness, with scarcely any of the necessaries, and
none of the comforts of life, in the only place that sheltered travel-
lers; but from that cabin he could see the stone walls of her prison-
house across the white sea of the snow-covered ydains; it w^as enough.
The s])ot was dearer to him than the gay, delirious pleasures of his
own l^rris. In the world wherever he chose to go, he would have
luxury, w’elcoine, amusement, the rapture of crowds, the envy of
men, the love of women, all the charm that success and art and fame
can lend to life at its zenith. But he stayed on at Szarisla for sake
of seeing those pale stern walls that rose up from the sea of snow.

U’hose walls enclosed her life.

The snow had ceased to fall, the frost had set in, in its full in-
tensity ; one day the sun poured through tlie heavy vapours of the
eloud-eovered

He went nearer the building than be had ever done. He thought
it iK'ssibie the gleam of the sun might temj)t her to the open air.

JIc stood without the gates and looked ; tljc front of the great
sombre pile seemed to frown, the casements had iron stanchions ;
the doors were like the doors of a prison.

“ And that brute has shut her licre ! ” lie thought, shut her hero
while he sups with Cassc-unc-Croulc 1 ”

Suddenly he seemed to himself ‘to be a coward, because be did
Jiot strike Sergius Zourolf, and shame him before the world.

“I have no right,” he thought. “But docs a man want one
when a woman is wronged?”

lie stood in the shadow of some great Siberian pines, a century
old, and looked “ his heart out through hi:<,eyes.”

As he stood there, one person and then another, and then another,
came up and stood there; until they, gathered in a little crowd ; he
asked, in their own tongue, of one of them why they came ; they
were all poor ; the man who was a cripple said to him : “ The Prin-
cess used to come to us while she could ; now she is ill we come to
lier ; she is strong enough sometimes to let us see her face, touch
lier hand ; the sun is out ; perhaps she will appear to-day ; twice a
week the charities^are given.”

Correze cast his furs cldse about him, so that his face was
not seen, and stood in the shadow of the gre^t gateway. «•

The doors of the building opened ; for a moment he bould see
nothing ; his eyes were blind with the intensity of his desire and
his fear.

^MOTES.

391

Wlicn the mist passed from liis sight he saw a tall and slender
form, moving with the grace that ho knew so well, but very wearily
and very slowly, come out -from the great doors, and through the
gates.; the throng of cripples and sufferers and poor of all sortS fell
on their knees and blessed lier.

lie kneeled with them, but he could ^ not move his lips to any
blessing ; with all the might of his anguish he cursed Sergius Zouroff.

Vere’s voice, much weakened, but grave and clear as of old, came
to his ear through the rarefied air.

“My people, do not kneel to me ; you know it i)ains me. It is
lung since 1 saw you ; what can I do?”

She spoke iecbly ; she leaned on a tall cane she bore, and as she
moved the thick veil from about her head, tho man who would have
given his life for hers saw tljat she was changed and aged as if by
the passing of many years. He stilled a cry that rose to liis lips,
and stood and gazecl on lier.

iiie i)Oor had long tales of woe; she listened ])atiently, ani
moved from one to another, saying a few words to each ; beliind her
were her women, who gave alms to each as she directed tlicm. She
seemed to have little strength ; after a time slio stood still, leaning
on her cane, and the people grouped about her, and kissed tlio furs
she wore.

Coriezc went forward timidly and with hesitation, and kneeled
by lier, and touched with his lips the hem of the clothes.

“ Wliat do you uisli V” she said to him, seeing in him only a
strang{‘r, for his face Wiis hidden ; then as she looked at liim a tremor
ran through her ; she started, and quivered a little.

“ WJio are you ? ” she said quickly and faintly ; and before lie
could answer muttered to him, “ Is this how you keep your word ?
-* — you are cruel ! ”

“For the love of God let me see you alone, let me speak one
word,” he murmured, as he still kneeled on the frozen snow. “ You
jirc suffering ? you arc ill V”

She moved a little away, apart from the ])coplo wdio only saw in
him the traveller they knew, and Ih ought he sought some succour
from tlie mistress of Szarisla. lie followed her.

“ Y'oii promised ” she said ivcarily, and then her voice sank.

“ 1 ja’omiscd,” he murmured, “and I had not strength to keep
it ; I will go away now that 1 have seen you. Ihit you are ill, this
country kills you, your peoplo^say so ; it is you who are cruel.” .

He could scarcely see her in the veils, and the heavy fur>lincd
robes that screened her from the cold ; he could only see the delicate
checks grown thin and wan, and the lustrous eyes that were so weary

so large.

“ I am not ill ; I arri only weak,” she said, wlnlo her voice came
with effort. “Oh, why'did you come ? it was cruel 1 ”

Slio dioj'»ped her hood over her face; he heard her weeping — it
was the first time he had ever seen self-control broken.

392

MOTES. •

** Why cruel ? ” he murmured. Dear God ! how can I bear it ?
You suffer ; you suffer in health as well as in mind. What do you
do with your life ? — is it to perish here, buried in the snow like a
frozen dove’s? He is a brute beast ; wdiat need to obey him? what
need to bo faithful ? ”

“ Hush — hush ! there has been sin enough to expiate. Let mo
live and die hero. Go — go — go!”

Correze was silent. He gazed at her and loved her as he had
never loved her or any other; and yet knew well tliat she was right.
Nay, he thoug^it almost bc'tter could he bear the endless night of
perpetual separation than bo the tempter to lead that fiiir life down
into the devious ways of hidden intrigue, or out into the bald and
garish glare of ojjcn adultciy.

“ 0 my love, my empress, my saint 1 ” he murmured, as all Lis
soul that yearned for her gazed from his aching eyes. “ Long ago I
said cursed bo those who bring you the knowledge of evil. Others
have brought it you ; I will not bring more. 1 love you ; yes ; what
of that ? I have sung of my love all my days, and I have sworn it
to many, and I liave been its slave often, too often ; but my love for
you is as unlike those passions as you arc unlike the world. Yet
you ask me to leave you here in the darkness of these ghastly
winters ; in the midst of an alien people that curse the name you
bear ; alone amidst every peril, surrounded by traitors and spies ?
Ask mo any other thing ; not that I ”

“ It must be that,” she said ; her voice was below her breath, hut
it was linn.

No, no — not that, not that 1 ” lie ciied passionately ; any
other thing; not that! Let me stay wliero 1 see the roof that
shelters you. Let me stay wlicrc I breathe the same air as jmu
breathe. Let me stay whore, from a distance in the forests, 1 can
watch your horses go by and see the golden gleam of your hair on
the mists ; I will perish to the world ; I will he dead to men ; I will
conae and live here as a hunter or a woodcutter, as a tiller of tho
fields — what you will ; but let me live wlierc 1 know all that befalls
you, where I can he beside you if you need mo, where I can kiss tho
wind as it blows, because in its course it touched your check ”

In all tho strength of his passion, in all the melody of his voice,
the eloquence that was as natural to him as song to a bird iioured
itself out in that prayer. Only to dwell near her — never to touch
her hand, never to meet her eyes, hut to be near her where she
dwelt, in this land of frost, of silence,, of darkness, of danger, of
sorrow — that was all ho asked. And aH'*the tenderness that was in
h(?r, all tho youth, all the womanhood, all the need of sympathy and
affection that wxrc in her loiiged to grant his prayer.

To have him remain within call ; to feelj|.that in thatriark, lone,
wintry desert his heart beating and his courage was’wiitchi.ng
near her ; to think that when the chill stars shone out of the mid-
night clouds they would shint on some lonely forest cabin wliere

MOTHS.

393

this one creature who loved her would bo living in obscurity for her
sake; — this was so sweet a thought she dared not look at it, lest her
force should fail her. She gathered all her strength. Sl\c remem-
bered all that his life was to him — so gay, so great, so full or love,
and honouV, and triumph, — ^^vould she be so weak, so wicked, in her
selfishness as to take him from the W'orld for her, to be his living
grave, to make him bankrupt in genius, in art, in feme ?

She thrust the temptation from her as though it were a coiling
snake.

You mean the thing you f'ay,” she murmured /aintly. Yes ;
and I am grateful; but all that can never be. Ah. you can do for
me is — to leave me.”

“ How can I leave you — ^leave you to die alone ? What need-—
what use is there in such a waste of life? No ! what yoiubid mo
do, T do. I will keep the word I gave you; if yvoii tell me to go, I
go, but for the pity of heaven, think first what it is you ask ; think
a little of what I sufler.”

“ Have I not thought?”

She put her hands out feebly towards him.

‘'If you love mo indeed, leave me; there is sin enough, shame
enough, spare me more. If indeed you love me, be my good angel
— not my tempter ! ”

He was pierced to the heart ; he, the lover of so many women,
knew well that moment in the lives of all women who love, and are
loved, when they sink in a trance of ecstasy and pain, and yield
without scarce knowing that they yield, and arc as easily drawn
downward to their doom as a boat into the whirlpool. He saw that
this moment had ooine to her, as it comes to every woman into whoso
life has entered love. He saw that he might be the master of her
fate and her.

For an instant the temptation seized him, like a flame that
wrapped him in its fire from head to foot. But the appeal to his
strength and to his pity called to him from out that mist and licat
of passion and desire. All that was generous, that was chivalrous,
that was heroic, in him, answered to the cry. All at once it seemed
to him base — base, witli the lowest sort of cowardice — to try and
drag the pure and lofty spirit to earth, to try and make her one with
the women she abhorred. Ho took her hands, and pressed them
close against his aching heart.

Better angels than I shcfuld be witli you,” he murmured ; “ but
at least I will try and save you from devils. No man's love is fit
for you. I will go, and I will never return.”

He stooped, and with tremulous Irps touched her hands ; then
once more he left her, and wont away over the frozen snow.

394

Moma.

CHAPTER XXIX.

WiTHaxTT pause Correze travelled straight to Paris.

He reached there late, and had barely time to dress and pass os
to the stage.

It was the opera of “ Romeo and G-iulictta.”

He knew its music as a child knows its cradle-song.

He ])lnycd, acted, and sang, from one end to the other of tlie
long acts perfectly, but without any consciousness of what he did.

“ I am the incclianical nightingale,” he thought, bitterly : the
crowded opera-house swam before his eyes.

Are you ill, Correze ? ” murmured the great songstress, who
was his Juliet.

“ I am cold,” he answered licr. It seemed to him as if the cold
of those bitter plains, which were the prison of Vcrc, and might be
her tomb, had entered his blood and frozen his very heart.

When he went lo his carriage the streets were lined with the
throngs of a city that loved him. They pressed to see him, they
shouted Ids name, they flung bouquets of ilowci’S on to liim ; he was
their lloi Sokiil, ilieir prince of song. He wondered was he mud, or
wore they ? His voice felt strangled in liis throat ; he saw nothing
of the lighted streets and the jo3mus multitudes, he saw only the
j)iteous eyes of the woman lie loved as she had said to him—

“ Be my angel, not 1113’' tempter ! ”

I cannot be her angel,” ho said to himself. “ But I will try
and save her from devils.”

In all his life before lie had never been at a loss. lie had
never known before wliat doubt meant, or

What hell it is in waiting to abide.

His victories had all been facile, his love liad all been swift and
smooth, his career had been a via tnamjfliaUs without shadow, ho
had been liaiipy always, he had had romance in his life, hut no
grief, no loss, no regret ; he had been the spoiled child of fate and
of the world.

Now the fatal tenderness, the unavailing regret, which had
heen no darker than a summer cloud when lie liad passed away
from the shores of Calvados, leaving the child, A^cro Herbert, in her
motlier’s hands, had now spread over all his present and hung over
ill! the horizdu of his future in a sunless gloom that nothing Would
-ever break or lighten.

And he was powerless !

If be could have acted in any way lie would have been^consolcd.
Tho elasticity and valour of his tern i)orameii<! would ^lavc bapt up
to action like a bright sw#d from l^e scabbard. But he could do
nothing. The woman ho adored might perish slowly of thoi^

MOTEB. 395

nameless maladies which kill the body through the mind ; and he
could do nothing.

He would not tempt her, and he could not avenge her.

Ho who knew the world so intimately, who had seen a nilllion
times a laugh, a hint, a word, destroy the honour of a name, knew
well that he would but harm her more by any defence of her
innocence, any protest against the tyranny of her husband.

Though he gave his life -to defend her fair fame, the world
would only laugh.

lie drove through the brilliant streets of Paris at midnight, and
shut his eyes to the familiar scenes with a* heaitsick weariness
of pain. He loved cette bonne ville de FariSy which had smiled on
him, played with him, pampered with him, as a. mother her
favourite child ; which always lamented his departure wheii^ljc left
it, which always welcomed him with acclamation when he returned,
lie loved it with affection, \vith habit, with the strength of a
thousand memories of liis glory, of his pleasure, of his youth ; yet
as he drove through it, almost ho cursed it; Paris sheltered the
vices of Sergius Zouroff, and worshipped his wealth.

He entered the club of the Grand Circle after the opera. Ho
wished to gatlier tidings of the husband of Vere and of what the
world said of her in her exile.

In one of the rooms Zouroff was seated, his hat was on the table
beside him; lie was s])caking with the Marqiiis do IVIorilliao. As
(kuTCze cntcicd, Zouroff rose and put his hat ou his head. Let us
go to a club wliere there arc no" comedians,” ho said in a loud voice
to Ilcrvd de Meri Iliac, and went out. It was an insolence wntli
intention ; in the Ganaches men keep their heads uncovered.

All who were present looked at Correze. lie to(di: no notice,
lie spoke to his own acquaintances; the iiisuit had no power tc^
move him since he had so long kept his arm niutiuiilcss, and his
lips mute, for her sake.

Some men who knew him well and wore curious, made a vague
apology for the Itussiaii- Prince.

“ He is jealous,” they added, with a little fatuous laugh. “ You
come from Poland ! ”

“ I have snug in Moscow and Warsaw,’* said Correze, with an
accent that warned them not to pursue the theme. “ And it is
true,” ho added, with a grave coldness that had its wcig])t from one
so careless, so gay, and so fj^jile of temper as he was — “ it is true
that in a part of Poland the Princess Vera Zouroff does live on one
of her husband’s estates, devoting herself to the poor because she
prefers solitude and exile to receiving as her friend the widow of
Paul de Ponnaz, the sister of Hervd de^Merilhac.”

For moment, such is the immediate force of truth, no one
laughed,* Thare was ike silence of respect.

Then they spoke of his ret^, of th^ opera that night, of his
stay in Vienna, of all tlio topicT oL the hour then occupying the

396

MOTHS.

scarcely-opened salons of Paris. No man in the Ganaches was
bold enough to speak again in his presence of Princess Zouroff.

Why did you -insult Corrdze?” said the Marquis de Merilhac,
as Zouroff passed on with him to the Hue Scribe.

“I do not choose to be in tjhe same club with a singer,**
answered Zouroif, with rough impatience.

“ But ho belongs to half the great clubs of Europe.”

** Then I will insult him in half of them I You may have
hoard, il fait la cour a ma

" Jeaime tojd me something at Felicite,” said Herv(S de Merilhac.
** But she said it was only romance.”

“ Komance ! Faust or Edgardo ! or, as in a Eenaissanco drcs«,
he is adored by Leonora 1 Marci him / I am not jealous, I am
not unreasonable ; I know the destinies of husbands. But I do not
accept a rival in the satin and tinsel of the stage 1 Half a century
ago,” added Zouroff, as he turned in at the doors of the Jockey
Club, “one could have had this man beaten by one’s lackeys.
Now one is obliged to meet him at one’s cerc?c and insult him as
though he were a noble.”

“ He is one,” said the Marquis do Merilhac, who was perplexed
and dissatisfied.

“ Faugh 1 ” said Zouroff, with the scorn of a great prince.

The next morning, as Correze passed through the gardens of tho
Tuileries, he chanced to see tho small, spare form of the Princesse
N^laguinc; she was seated on a bench in the sunshine of tho
wintry morning, watching the little children of her eldest son float
their boats upon one of tlio basins. He paused, hesitated, saluted
her, and af>proached, Madame Nelagiiine smiled on him.

“Why not?” she thought, “ there is nothing true; even were
it true she would be justified.”

Correze spoke to her with tho compliment of daily life, which
he, better than most men, could divest of the commonplace and
invest with grace and dignity. Then abruptly ho said to her,
“Princesse, I was coming to you this morning; I have been to
Szarisla— — ” ^

She started,’ and looked at him in surprise.

“To Szarisla? You have seen — my brother’s wife? It is
strange you should tell me.”

“ I tell you because she is your brother’s wife,” answered Cor-
reze ; his face was pale and grave, and his tone was sad and cold,
with an accent of rebuke, which her quick ear detected. “ May
I speak to you honestly ? I should be your debtor if you would
allow me.”

She hesitated; then sent the children and their attendants
farther away, and motioned to him to sit besMe her. c

“ I suppose you know what they say,” she said to hinS ; “ my
brother would think I did ill to lisjjip to you.”

“ In what they say, they lie ”

MOTHS. 89t

“ The world always lies, or almost always ; I think it lies about
you, or I should not speak to you. You have been to Szarisla ? ”

“ I have been there ; I have seen her for five minutes, no more,
though I lived in the village five weeks. Madame, she ha^dcath
in her face.”

The tears rushed into his hearer’s keen, curious eyes, her lips
trembled.

“No — no, Jrou exaggerate! Vera dying? You make my
heart sick. I have feared for her health always — always — what
did you do those five long weeks ? ”

“ I waited to see her face,” said Correze simfily. “ Madame,
listen to me one moment ; I will try not to tiro your patience. She
is your brother’s wife ; yes, but she is dealt with as ho would never
(leal with one of his mistresses. Listen; long ago, when sho was a
child, I met her on a summer morning ; I loved her then ; call it
fancy, caprice, poetry, what you will'; her mother gave her, not to
me, but to Prince Zouroff. I kept away from her; I would not
sing in Kussia whilst she was there ; 1 would not approach her in
Paris ; if I had seen her in peace, seen her even respected, I would
have tried to be coutent, I would for ever have been silent ; instead,
1 have seen her insulted in every way that infidelity can insult a
woman— - ”

“ 1 kno^v ! I know ! Spare me that ; go on ”

“At last 1 knew that she was sent into exile; and why?
because she would no longer receive Jeanne do Sonnaz.”

“ It was a madness to refuse to receive J eanno de Sonnaz ; after
all, wliat did it matter? w'omcn meet their rivals, their foes, every
liour, and kiss them. It was madness to refuse ! ”

“ It may have been. It was noble, it was truthful, it was brave,
it was befitting the delicacy and the dignity of her nature. For that
act, though no one can deny that she is in the right, she is exiled
into a laud 'where life is unendurable, even to yourselves, natives of
it ; where the year is divided between an endless winter and a short,
parching season of heat that it is mockery to call the sminncr;
where the only living creatures that surround her are servants who
watch and chronicle lu^r simplest action, and peasants, whoso God
is a dream, and whose homes arc hovels. Did your brother wish
for her dealh, or for her insanity, that he chose Szarisla?”

“ My brother wishes that she should meet Jeanne do Sonnaz.
I am frank with you ; bo fra^k with me. Are you the lover of my
brotlier’s wife ? Paris says so.”

“ Madame, that I love her, and shall love no other whilst I live,
I do not deny. That I am her lover is a lie, a calumny, a
blasphemy, against her.”

Madame Ncilaguine was silent ; she looked at him with search-
ing, pierwhg eyes.

“•What did* you do, then, at Szarisla ?

^ “ I went to see her face, to neaj her footsteps, to be sure that

398

MOTHS.

fihe lived. I spoke to her; I laid my soul, my honour, all the
service of my life, at her feet, and she rejected them. That is all.’^

“All?’»

^le was once more silent ; she was a suspicious woman and a
cynical, and often false herself, and never credulous; yet she
believed him.

“You have been unwise, imprudent; you should never have
gone there,’* she said suddenly. “ And she is ill, you say ? ”

“ The priest said so ; she looks so ; she is weak ; she is all alone.
I should never have gone there? I should have been a coward
indeed if I hatl not ; if I had known her so deeply wronged, and
had not at least offered her vengeance— ”

“ Her husband is my brother ! **

“ Xt is because he is your brother that I asked the grace of your
patience to-day. Madame, remember it is very terrible that at
twenty years old an iiinoccht creature, lovely as the morning,
should bo confined in exile till she dies of ulter weariness, of utter
loneliness, of utter hopelessness! Prince Zonroff is within his
rights, but none the less is ho an assassin. I believe lie alleges
that shci is free to return, but when he couples her return with an
unworthy condition that she cannot accept, she is as much his
captive as though chains were on her. If she remain there, she
wdll not live, and she will never consent to leave Szarisla, since
she can only leave it at the inico of affected fiiciidship with the
Duchesso do 8onnaz **

^ “Wliai would you have me do?” cried his hearer in a sudden
agitation very rare with her, in which anger and sorrow strove
tog(dher; “what is it you ask? what is it you wish? I do not
uiidorstand **

“ I wish yon to speak to Prince Zonroff.”

“ Speak to Sergius ? ”

“In my name, yes; ho would not hear mo, or I would speak
myself. Madame, your brother knows very well that his wife is
as innocent as the angels, but it suits him that all the world should
suspect lier.”

“ Then ho is a villain ! ”

“ Mo is under the iiiQuence of an unscrupulous woman, that is
nearly the same thing. Madame do Sonnaz never forgave his
marriage ; she now avenges it. Madame, what 1 wish is that you
should speak to your brother as I apeak to you. lie would not
hear me; that is natural.^ He is her husband, I am nothing; he
has the right to refuse to listen to her name from my mouth. But
you, he will hear. Tell him what I have told you ; tell him that,
when the world speaks of hie and of her it lies ; and tell him— I
can think of no better way — that to remove all possibility of
suspicion, to put away all semblance of trhth fromr.the rumours of
society, I myself will die to the world. Why not ? I am tired.
She will never he mine. Fanv^ is nothing to me. The very miasio

MOTHS.

399

I have adored all my life seems like the mere shaking of dried peas
in an emp^ hladdcv. I cannot forget one woman’s face, a woman
who will never he mine. I will leav©vart and the world of men ; I
will go back to the mountains where I was born, and live the life
my fathers led; in a season Europe will have forgotten that it had
ever an idol called Corrdze. ’ Nay, if that fail to content him, if he
doubt that I shall keep my word, I will do more ; I will enter one
of those retreats where men are alone with their memories and
with God. There is the Chartreuse that has sheltered greater men
than I and nobler lives than mine. It is all alone amidst the hills ;
I should be in my native air ; I could go there. * You stare ; do
you doubt ? I give my word that I will die to the world ; I can
tldnk of no other way to save her name from mine. • If that con-
tent him I will do it, if he will bring her back into tho honour of
tlie woild, and never force her to sec Jeanne de 8onnaz. Docs it
scorn so muck to jmu to do ? It is nothing ; I would die in my body
for her, or to do her any good. Thus I shall die, only in name.”

llo ceased to spealv, and his hearer was silent. There was no
sound but the wind blowing through tho scorched ruins of tho
'J'uilcries, and scattci'iug on the earth the withered leaves of tho
trees.

'Mbit what you will do is a martyrdom,” she cried abruptly;
“it is (loath ten thousand times over! Retreat from the world?
you ? the world’s idol 1 ”

“ I would do more for her if I knew what to do.”

She held out her hand to him.

“ You are very iiobki.”

“ I will do what I sny,” ho answered simply.

She was silent, in tho silence of a great amaze; the amazement
of a selfish and a corrupt nature at one that is unselfish and uncor-
rii])t(xl.

“ You arc very noble,” she murmured once more, “ and she is
worthy of your heroism. Alas! it will be of no use; you do not
und(.!rstaud my l)rotho4'’s character, nor what is now moving his
mind. Y'uu do not see that his desire is, not to save his who from
you, but to force her to divorce him.”

“ If he were not your brother ”

“ You would curse him as a scoundrel ? Ho is not that ; he is
a man, too rich, spoiled by tho world, and now dominated by a
dangerous woman. I will sj^^ak to him ; I will tell him what you
have said ; hut I have little hope.”

She gave him her hand again, her eyes were wet. He rose,
bowed, and left her. Ho had done what lie could.

At that moment Sergius Zouroffj'^n the smoking-room of the
GanricheSj.was reading a little letter that had come to him from
the clvlttau ofj^uilhierts. It was very short, it said only, “ Correzo
has Returned to Paris; he has been at Szarisla, Do not let his
ti^ent, the trained talent of the stage, deceive you.”

400 MOm&

Madame Sfilag^ae an hour later told him of what had been
said to her in the gardens of the Tuileries. She sj^^ke with an
elcxmenoe she could command at will* with ah emotion that was
¥ard;a i^i^ilde in hen

^*This man is noble/* she said when she had exhausted all
argument and all entreaty^ and had won no syllable from him in
teply. ** Have you no nobility to answer his ? His sacrifice would
be unparalleled, his devotion superb ; he will die to the world in

height of his fame, like a king that abdicates in his full glory
and youth. Can you not rise m once to his height? Will a
prince of our blood be surpassed in generosity by an artist?"

He heard his sister speak in unbroken silence. She was afraid
with a great fear. His stormy passions usually spent themselves
in rage that was too indolent to act, but his silence was always as
terrible as the silence of the frost at midnight in his own plains,
when men were dying in the snow.

“ You may be the dupe of a comedian's coup dc ihidivt^^ was
all that he said when she had ended ; “lam not ; tell Mm so."

Sergius Zouroff knew well when he looked into his own heart
that he was -doing a base thing ; he knew well that Vero was as
pure of any earthly sin as any earthly creature can be ; he did not
believe any one of the daughters of men had ever been so innocent
as she, or so faithful to the things she deemed her duty. But he
stifled his conscience, and let loose only the rage which consumed
him ; half rage against her because she was for ever lost to him,
half rago against himself for this other tyranny, which bo had
allowed to eat into and absorb his ^life. He was sullen, angered,
dissatisfied, a dull remorse was awake in him, and the savage
temper which had been always uncontrolled in him, craved for
some victim on which to vent itself. His wife he dared not
approach. His fury, though never his suspicions, foil upon Correze.

“He is not her lover j she is pure as the ice,** he said im-
patiently to himself. But she was not there, and Correze was
before his eyes in Paris. A real and sombre hatred grow up in
him ; for little, for nothing, he would have killed this man as he
killed a bird. '

Corrdze sang this night at the drand Opera, accordhig to his
engagement.

Ae opera-house was in a tumult of rapture and homage;
flowers rained on him; women wept; Paris the cynical, Paris the
mocker, Paris the inconstant, was faitnful to him, worshipped him,
loved him aa ppets love, and dogs. It was the grandest night that
even his triw^hal life ever kno^^. It was the last. When
the glittering crowds swam before his eyes, and welcomed his
return^ in his heart he said to them, ** farewell "

As men doomed to death at dawn look the sunrise V the last
day they will ever see, so he looked at the crowds that hung upon
hhl voice. It was for the last time, he said to himself; to-morrjw

MOTES.

401

he would keep the word he had given to Sergius Zouroff and would
perish to the world, lie 'would sing no more, save in the matin
song, in the cold, white dawns, in the , monastery of the mountains
above Grenoble.

“ She said rightly,” he thought; “it is so easy to die.”

“But to live so would be-hard.”

He would leave the laugh of the world behind him; a few
women would mourn their lost lover, and the nations Avould mourn
their lost music, but the memory of nations is short-lived for the
absent, and he knew well that for the most part the world would
laugh ; laugh at Buy Bias, who chose to bury his *life for a fatal
])assion in the solitudes of the mountains in days when passion has
lost all dignity and solitude all consolation. To the world he
would seem but a romantic fool, since in this time there are peithcr
faith nor force, but only a dreary and monotonous triviality that
has no fire for hatred and has no soulTor sacrifice.

“I can think of nothing else,” he said to himself. Ho could
think of no other way by which he could efface himself from the
living world without leaving remorse or calumny upon her name.
And to him it was not so terrible as it would have been to others.
He had had all the uttermost sweetness and perfection of life, ho
had drunk deeply of all its intoxications, he was now at the zenith
of his triumphs. He thought that it would be better to lay aside
the cup still full rather than drain it to the lees. He thought that
it would not be so very bitter after all to abdicate, not one half so
bitter as to await the waning of triumphs, the decay of strength,
the gradual change from public idolatry to public apathy, which
all genius secs that does not perish in its prime. And he had more
of the old faiths in him than most men of his generation. Ho had
something of the enthusiast and of the visionary, of Montalembcrt
and of Pascal. It would not be so hard, ho thought, to dwell
amidst the silence of the mountains, waiting until the Unknown
God should reveal by death the mystcpics of life. Beyond all and
beneath all, as he had often said, he was a mountaineer; he would
be a monk amidst the mountains. Let the world laugh.

As the crowd of the Opera House recalled him, and the plaudits
that he would never hear again thundered around him, he mur-
mured —

Je briscrai sur nion genou
Le sceptre avee le diadlsme ^

Comme un enf^t casse im joujou,

Moi-meme, en plein rfegne, au grand jour.

And his eyes were wet as he looked for the last time on the people
of Paris and said in his heart — farewell*

As he , went away from the theatre, amidst the shouts of the
exulting •multitude — waiting as when kings pass through cities
that hail them as victors — a note was brought to him. It was
frqpi Nadine Ndlaguine. It said ^erely : “ I have spoken to my

2 D

402 MOTHS.

brother, but it is of no use. He will hear no reason. Leave
Paris.”

The face of Correze grew dark.

‘*^1 will not leave Paris,” he said to himself. lie saw in the
counsel a warning or a threat. “ I will not leave Paris until I enter
the shroud of the monkish habit.”

And he smiled a little wearily, thinking again that when he
should have buried himself in the Chartreuse the world would only
see in tlio action a coup de ihedtre ; a fit ending to the histrion who
liad been so often the Fernando of its lyric triumphs.

He went down the street slowly on foot, the note of Hadiiu
Ndlaguine in his hand, his carriage following him filled with the
bouquets and wreaths that had covered the stage that night.

Uq looked up at the stars and thought : “ When I am amidst the
snows alone in my cell, will these nights seem to me like licaveii
or like hell ? » •

An old and intimate friend touched his arm and gave him a
journal of the evening.

“ Have you read this ? ” said his friend, and pointed to an article
signed “ Un qui n'y croit pasj*

It was one of the wittiest papers that was sold upon the Boule-
vards ; there was a brilliant social study; it was called, “ivcs anyes
ierrestres,^^

Under thin disguises it made its sport and jest of the Ice-flower
away in Poland, and the Romeo of Paris, who was breaking the
hearts of women by an anchorite’s coldness.

It had been written by a ready writer in the Rue Meyerbeer, but
its biting irony, its merciless raillery, its gay incredulity, its spark-
ling venom, had been inspired from the retreat of Ruilhieres.

Correze turned into Bignon’s, which he was passing, and read it
sitting in the light of the great salon.

It would have hurt him less to have had a score of swords
buried in his breast.

“If I avenge her I shall but darken her name more ! ” he
thought, in that agony of impotence which is the bitterest suffering
a bold and a fervent temper can ever kno\V.

At that moment Sergius Zouroff entered ; ho had both men and
women with him. Amongst the women were a circus-ride»iof the
lIip])odrome, and the quadroon Casso-unc-Crofite.

It was midnight.

Correze rose to his feet at a bound, and approached the hus-
band of Vere.

With a movement of his hand he showed him the article he had
read. I

“ Prince Zouroff,” he said, between his teeth. “ WiJI you chas-
tise this as it merits, or do you leave it to «ne ? ” • •

Zouroff looked at him with a cold stare. He had already seen
the paper. For the moment l^c was silent.

MOTES.

403

“I say,” repeated Corroze, still between bis teeth. “Do you
avenge the honour of the Princess Zou^off ? I ask you in public,
that your answer may bo public.”

“ The honour of the Princess Zouroff I *’ echoed her husband^ with
a loud laugh. “ Mais — e’es^ a vous, monsieur ! ”

Correze lifted his hand anti struck him on the check.

“ You are a liar, you arc a coward, and you are an adulterer I ”
he said, in his clear, far-reaching voice, that rang like a bell through
the silence of the assembled people ; and he struck him three times
as he spoke.

CHAPTER XXX.

To Szarisla, in the intense starlit cold of a winter’s night, a horse-
man, in hot haste, brought a message that had been borne to . the
nearest city on the electric wires, and sent on by swift riders over
many versts of snow and ice.

It was a message from Sergius Zouroff to his wife, and her women
took it to her when she lay asleep ; tho troubled, weary sleep that
comes at morning tp those whose eyes have not closed all night.

It was but a few words.

It saitl only : “ I have shot your nightingale in the throat. Ho
will sing no more ! ”

She read the message.

For a few moments she knew nothing; a great darkness fell
upon her and she saw nothing; it passed away, and tho native
courage and energy of her character came to life after their long
paralysis.

She said no word to any living creature. She lay quite still upon
her bed, her hand crushed upon the paper. She bade her women
leave her, and they did so, though they were frightened at her look,
and reluctant.

It was an hour past midnight.

When all was again still she arose, and clothed herself by the
light of tho burning lamp. No man can suffer from insult as a
Avoman does who is at once proud and innocent. A man can avenge
himself at all times, unless he be a poltroon indeed; but to a woman
there is no vengeance possible that will not make her seem guiltier
in the eyes of others, and more deeply lowered in her own. As
Vere rose and bound her hair closely about her head, and clothed
herself in the furs that were to shelter her against tho frightful frost,
all her veins were on fire with a consuming rage that for the
moment almost burnt out the grief that came with it.

She •had. been made a public sport, a public shame, by her
husband, who knew her innocent, and faithful, and in temptation
Uiitcmptcd ! She had been sacrifi jed in life, and peace, and name.

m

MOWS.

niid fame, to screen the adulterous guilt of another woman ! All
the courage in her waked up in sudden resurrection ; all the haughty
strength of her character revived under the unmerited scourge of
insult?.

They should not dishonour her in her ahscncc. They should
not lie without her ])rotcst and her presence. He who was also guilt-
less should not suffer alone. Perhaps already he was dead. She could
not tell ; she read the message of her husband as meaning death ;
she said to herself, “Living, 1 will console him ; dead, I will avenge
hirn.^'

She drew the marriage-ring off her hand, and traini)lcd it under
her foot as Sergius Zouroff had trodden the Moth and the Star.

There is a time in all patience when it becomes weakness ; a
time in all endurance when it becomes cowardice ; then with great
natures jiatience breaks and becomes force, endurance rises, and
changes into action.

She, proud as great queens arc, and blameless as the saints of
the ages of faith, had been made the sport of the tongues of the
world; and he who had loved her as knights of old loved, in
suffering and honour, was dead, or worse than dead.

The fearlessness of her temper leapt to act, as a lightning-flash
sj)rings from the storm-cloud to illumine the darkness. “ 1 am not
a coward,” she said with clenched teeth, while her eyes were dry.
She prepared for a long and i)erilous journey. She put on all hej-
fur-lined garments. She took some rolls of gold, and th(} ])apers
that proved her identity as the wife of Prince Zouroff, and would
enable her to pass the frontier into East Prussia. With these,
holding the dog hy the collar, she took a lanij) in her hand and
])asscd through the vast, daik, silent corridors, that were like the
streets of a catacomb. There was no one stirring ; the household
slept the heavy sleep of brandy-drinkers. No one heard her step
down the jiassages and staircase. She undid noiselessly the bolts
and bars of a small side door and went out into the air. It was of
a i)iercing coldness.

It was midwinter and past midnight. I'lie whole landscape was
white and frozen. The stars seemed to burn in the steel-liucd sky.
She went across the stone court to where the stables lay. She
would rouse no one, for she knew that they would to a man obey
their Prince and refused toi)crmit her departure without his written
order. She \vcnt to the stalls of the horses. The grooms were
all aslec]). She led out the two that she had driveu most often
since her residence at Szarisla. Her childish training was of use
to her now. She harnessed them. They know her w^cll and w^tc
docile to her touch, and shcj put them into the light, velvet-lined
sledge in which she had been used to drive herself through the fir
forests and over the plains. /» ’ .

Her feebleness and her feverishness had left her. She felt
strong in the intense strength which comes to women in hours of

UOTHB. 405

great mental /i^ony. Her slender hands had the force of a*Hercnles
hi tljem. She had driven so often through all the adjacent landa
that the plains were as well known to her as the mod's of Bulmer
had been to her in her childhood. Thp sledge and the horses* hoofs
made no sound on the frozen snow. Blio entered the slcdgo^imado
the dog he covered at her feet, and, with a word to the swift young
horses, she drove them oub of thie gates and into tlio woods, be-
tween the aisles of birch and pine. The moonlight was strong ;
the moon was at the full. The blaze of northern lights made the
air clear as day. She knew the road and took it unerringly. She
drove all night long. No sense of mortal fear reached her. She
seemed to herself frozen as the earth was. Tlic howl of wolves
rame ofteu on her ears in the ghastly solitude of the unending
lines of dwarfish and storm-rift trees. At any mpment some
famished pack might scent her coming on the air and meet her, or
puisuo her, and then of her life there would bo no more trace than
some blood upon the snow, that fresher snow would in another
hour obliterate. But she never thought of that. All she thought
of was of the voice which for her was mute for etcr.

When in the faint red of the sullen winter's dawn she arrived
at the first posting village with her horses drooping and exhausted,
the postmaster was afraid to give her other horses to pass onward.
She couM show him no order from Prince Zour^'if, but slie had
gold with her, and at length induced him to bring out fresh
animals, leaving her own with him to bo sent back on the morrow to
Szarishi. The postmaster was terrified at what he had done, and
shuddered at uhat might bo his chastisement; but the gold had
dazzled him. Ho gaz<d after her as the sledge flew over the white
ground atiainst the crimson glow of the daybreak, and prayed for
her to St. Nicholas.

Driving on and on, never pausing save to change her horses,
never stopping cither to eat or rest, taking a. draught of tei and
an atom of bread here and there at a posthouse, she at length
reached the frontiers of East Prussia.

Corrdzo hy on hia bed in his house at Paris. Crowds, from
princes and senators and marshals to workmen and beggars and
btreot-arabs, came and usked for him, and the pcoido stood in the
streets without, sorrowful and anxious. For 'the first news they
had heard was that he would die; then they were told that the
hfiCmorrhage had ceased, that it was possible he might live, but that
he would never sing again. ^

Paris heard, and wept for its darling— wept yet more for its own
lost music.

The days and the weeks went on, and the first emotion and
excitement warred with time. Then \]$q Crown-Prince of Germany
came into the city ; there were feasts, reviews, illnnimations. Paris,
as she firgot her own vyrongs, forgot her mute singer, lying in his
darkened room ; and the bouquets in his hall were faded and dead.

2 D 3

406 MOTgS.

No one left fresh ones. Only some score of poor people, amongst
them a blind man and a little ugly girl, hung always, trembling
and sobbing, about his doors, afraid lest their angel should unfold
his wings and leave them for the skies.

Ctrreze lay in his darkness, dumb.

He had been shot in the throat ; he himself had fired in the air.

When he had fallen, with the blood filling his mouth, he had
found voice to say to his adversary : “ Your wife is faultless I

Sergius ZourofF had looked down on him with a cold and fierce
contentment.

“ I have done you the honour to meet you, but I am not your
dupe,” he had ‘said, as he turned away: and yet in his soul he
knew — knew as well as that the heavens were above him — that
this man, whom he believed to be dying, spoke the truth.

They had met in the garden of the house of Correze. They
had ta^en only their seconds with them. It had all been arranged
and over by sunrise. Sergius Zouroff had hastened out of the*
city, and over the frontiers, to make his peace with his sovereign
in his own country. Correze bad been carried into liis own hoiiso
and laid in his own bedchamber. Their friends, according to the
instructions given them previously, had sent to tlie newspapers
of the hour a story of an accident that had occurred in playing
with a pistol ; but it had been soon suspected that this was but a
cover to a hostile account, and rumours of the truth had soon run
through Paris, where the scene at Bignon's had been the sensation
of the hour.

lie lay now in the gloom and silence of his chamber. Sisters
of charity were watching him : it was twilight there, though out-
side in Paris the sun was shining on multitudes of people and
divisions of troops as the city flocked to a review in the Champ dc
Mars,

He could not speak ; they would save his life, perhaps, hut ho
knew that they could never save his voice.

As a singer ho was dead.

All the joys of his art and all its powers were perished for
evermore, all the triumph and the ecstasy of song were finished as
a tale that was told; all the fame of hi^'life and its splendour
were snapped asunder in their prime and perfection, as a flower is
broken olf in full blossom.

“ And I did her no good 1 ” he thought ; he had lost all and ho
had done nothing ! ,

He was half delirious; his sight languidly recognised the
familiar room about him, and watched the stray lines of sunshine
glimmer through the shutters; but his mind was absorbed and
full of dull feverish dreamsr, he thought now of St. Petersburg,
with the rain of hothouse flowers on the ice in his ^nights of
triumph, now of the Norman sunshine wfth the commen roses
blooming against the fence of furze, now of the bleak snow-plains

M0TI18.

407

of Szarisla. All was confused to him and showed like figures in
a mist. Sometimes he thought that he was already dead, already
in his tomb, and that about him the crowds of Paris were singing
his own Noel. Sometimes he thought that he was in hell walking
with Dante and with Virgil, and that devils tried to hold him
down as he strove to cry aloud to Christ ; ‘‘Lord, she is innocent I ”

All the while he was mute ; he could scarcely breathe, he could
not speak.

Unconscious though they thought him, ho heard them say
around his bed : “ Ho may speak again, perhaps, but he will never
be able to sing a note.”

They thought him deaf as' well as dumb. Bift he heard and
understood.

In his fever and bis suffering he said always in his heart : “ If
only she will think that I did well ! ”

Then he would grow delirious again and forget, and he ‘fancied
that ho was called to sing to the pebple and that his mouth was
closed with steel.

The wintry sunshine was brilliant and clear; it was in the
afternoon ; through the dusk of his room there came tho distant
sounds of trumpets, and the boom of the cannon of the Invalides.
All else was still.

All Paris was interested with the pleasure of a spectacle ; tho
streets were deserted, the houses were emptied, all the city was in
the Champ do Mars, and on the cold clear air bursts of distant
sounds from clashing cymbals and rolling drums came into the
chamber of Corroze, whom Paris had forgotten.

At the Garc de I’Est with other travellers at that moment, there
descended from a sleeping carriage a woman clothed in furs, and
with a dog in a leash beside her.

She walked quickly, and with a haughty movement, across the
crowded waiting-room; she was alone except for her dog. Her
face was very white, her eyes seemed to burn as the stars did in
the Polish frost. She was .praying with all tho might of prayer in
her soul.

She might be too late to see him living; too late to tell him
that she loved him ; sne, for whose sake, and in whose defence, he
had found death, or worse than death !

All the courage, all the fearlessness, all the generosity of her
soul had Icaj^ed up into life and movement ; she had ceased to
remember herself or the world, she only prayed to heaven, “ Grant
him his life I his beautiful life, that is like sunlight upon the
earth 1 ”

She had come across the middle of Europe in tho winter
weather, over the snow plains and tie frozen rivers, unaided, un-
accommided, making no pause, taking no rest either by night or
day,' as she had come *through Poland.

She descended into the noise and dirt of the streets ; she who

m Moms.

had never been a yard on foot, or unattended, in. a city, llie
movement around her seemed to her ghastly and horrible. Could
he lie dying, and the city he loved not be still and stricken a
moment?

She mingled with the crowds and was soon lost in them, she
who had always g<me through Paris with jwmp and splendour ; she
at whose loveliness the mob had always turned to look ; she who
had been the Princess Zonroff.

!rb© day was drawing to its close ; the troops were returning,
the multitudes were shouting. In his darkened room Corrdze, dis-
turbed and distressed by the sounds, moved wearily and sighed.

The door of his chamber ©ironed and Vere entered.

She threw her furs and coverings off her as she moved and
came to the sisters of charity. The lassitude, the weakness, the
sickness which had weighed on her, and suffocated her youth in
her, were gone ; there was a great anguish in her eyes, but she
moved with her old free, prOud grace, she bore herself with the
courage of one whose resolve is taken and whose peace is made.

“ X am the woman for whom he fought,’* she said to the nuns.
** My place is with you.”

Then she went to the side of his bed and kneeled there.

“ It is I,” she said in a low voice.

From the misty darkness of pain and delirium his senses
struggled into life ; his eyes unclosed and rested on her face, and
had such glory in them as shone in the eyes of martyrs who saw
the saints descend to them.

He could not sxHsak, he could only gaze at her.

She bent her proud head lower and lower and touched his hand
with hers.

“ You have lost all for me. If it comfort you — am here I ”

MOTES.

409

CHAPTER XXXL

In tlie.licart of the Alps of the Valais there lies a little lake, namc^
less to the world, but beautiful ; green meadows and woods of pine
and beech encircle it, and above it rise the snow mountains, the
glory nearest heaven that earth knows.

A road winds down between the hills to Sion, but it is seldom
travt‘rsed ; the air is pure and clear as crystal, strong as wine ;
brooks and torrents tumble through a wilderncssT of ferns, the
cattle-maiden sings on the high grass slopes, the fresh-water fisher-
man answers the song from his boat on the lake, dcop,down belo\t
and darkly green as emeralds are.

The singer, who is mute to the world for ever, listens to the song
without ])ain, for he is hapj^y.

His home is here, above the shadowy water, facing the grand
am})hithcatre of ice and s»o\v, that at daybreak and at sunset flash
like the rose, glow like the fires of a high altar. It is an old house,
built to resist all storms, yet open for the sun and summer. Simple,
yet noble, with treasures of art and graces of colour, and the gifts
of kings, and emperors, and cities, given in those years that are
gone for ever to Correze. The waters wash its walls, the pine-
woods shelter it from the winds, its b'rraces fac(j the A1])S.

Here, when the world is remembered, it seems but a confused
and foolish dream, a fretting fever, a madness of disordered minds
and carking discontent. AVhat is the world beside Nature, and a
love that- scarcely even fears death since it believes itself to bo
immortal ?

He- leans over the stone balustrade of his tciTace and watches
the; rose-leaves, shaken oil hy the wind, drop down into the green
water far below, and float there like pink shells. On a marble
table by him tlid’o lie some pages of written music, the score of an
o])era, Avith Avhich he hopes to achieve a second fame in the king-
dom of music which knows him no more. A great genius can
uevcir altogether rest widiout creation, and he is yet young enough
to win the ivy-crown twice over in his life.

In the sunset light a woman, with a dog beside her, comes out
on to the terrace. She is clothed in Avhitc, her face has regained
its early loveliness, her eyes^have a serious sweet luminance; on
her life there will he ahvays the sadness of a noble nature that has
borne the burden of others’ sins, of a grand temper that has known
the bitterness of calumny, and has given back an unjust scorn with
a scorn just and severe; those shadow’s all the tenderness, the
r(wtTencc,^ the redigious homage of a man’s surpassing love can
never, wholly banish freyn her.

As with him, amidst his happiness, there will sometimes arise
a wistful longing, not fur the homage of the world, not for his old

410

MOTES.

hours of triumph, not for the sight of multitudes Waiting on tlie
opening of his lips, but for that magical power for ever perished,
that empire for ever lost over all the melody of earth, that joy" and
strength of utterance, which are now for ever as dead in him as the
song is dead in the throat of the shot bird, so upon her, for no fault
of her own, the weight of a guilt not her own lies heavily, and the
ineffaceable past is like a ghost that tracks her steps; from her
memory the pollution of her marriage never can pass away, and to
her purity her life is for ever defiled by those dead years, which arc
like millstones hung about her nock.

She was irmocent alwaj’^s, and yet . When the moths have

gnawed the ermine, no power in heaven or cartli cau make it ever
again altogetlier what once it was.

“You nfever regret?” Vere says to him, as they stand together,
and see the evening colours of glory shine on the snow summits.

“I? hogret that I lost tlie gas-glare to live in heaven’s light !
Can you ask such a thing ? ’*

“ Yet you lost so much, and ” ^

“ I have forgotten what 1 lost. Nay, I lost nothing. I passed
away off the world’s ear while 1 was yet great, how well that is —
to he spared all the discontent of decadence, all the pain of dimi-
nished triumphs, all the restless sting of new rivalries, all the
feebleness of a fame that has outlived itself — liow well that is ! ”

She smiles ; that grave and tender smile which is rather from
the eyes than on the mouth.

“ You say that because you are always generous. Yet when I
think of -all I cost you, I wonder that you love me so well.”

“ You wonder ! That is because you cannot see yourself ;
humility blinds you, as vanity blinds other women.”

“ TTuey called me too i^roud ”

“ Because you were not as they were ; what could they under-
stand of such a soul as yours ? ”

“ You understand me, and God sees me— that is enough.”

He takes her hands in his, and his kiss on tliein has as reverent
and knightly a grace as that with which he had bent to her feet in
the day of ISzarisla.

What is the world to them? what is the bray and the tinsel
of a mountebank’s show to those who watch the stars and dwell
in the gracious silence of the everlasting hills ?

♦ « 41 1(1 « 41

In the bright evening light of the ‘Spring-time at the same hour
the crowds go down the Boulevards of Paris. The black horses of
Prince Zouroff go with them ; he is sitting behind them alone.
His face is gloomy, his eyes are sullen. On the morrow he marries
his old friead Jeanne, Duchesse do Sonnaz.

Kussia, which }x?rinits no wife to plead against her hi'ishai;d, set
him freo and annulled his marriage on the' testimony of servants,
who, willing to please, and indiflereut to a lie the more, or a lie the

MOTHS, 411

loss, Lure the false witness that they thought would bo agreeable to
tlioir lord.

Too late he repents ; too late he regrets ; too late, he thinks, as
(lias 1 we all think : “ Could I have my life back, I would do other-
wise ! ”

In her own carriage, down the Avenue du Bois, drives the
Duchosse de Sonnaz, with her children in front of her; her face is
sparkling, her eyes are full of malice and entertainment ; the Fau-
bourg finds her approaching marriage with her lost Paurs old friend
one natural and fitting. With a satisfied soul she jsays to herself,
as tlie setting sun gilds Paris —

“ Avec un peu esprit, on arrive d tout''

For marriage she docs not care, but she loves a •triumph, she
(nijoys a vengeance — she has both. •

“ Je feral danser mon ours," she reflects, as the eyes of her
mind glance over her future.

The Princess N61nguine drives also in her turnout of the avenue
and down the Champs Elysdes ; with her is her old comrade. Count
Schondorff, who says to her —

“ And you alone know your brother’s divorced wife 1 Oh, surel}%
Nadine *’

“ 1 know the wife of Correze ; I know a very noble woman who
was the victim of my own brother and of Jeanne,” answers the
little Piussian lady with asperity and resolve. “ My dear Fritz, she
had no sin against my brother, no fault in her any where ; I have
told the Emperor the same thing, and I am not a coward, though I
shall salute Joanne on both cheeks to-morrow because life is a long
hypocrisy. Yes, I know Vera. 1 shall always love her; and
honour her too. So docs the Duchess of Mull. She was the
martyr of a false civilisation, of a society as corrupt as that of the
Borgias, and far more dishonest. She had chastity, and she had
also courage. AV e, who are all poltroons, and most of us adulteresses,
when we find a woman like that gibbet her, pour encourager les
autres"

At the same hour Dady Dolly, too, rolls home from Hyde Park,
and ascends to her little faii-lincd boudoir, and cries a little, prettil}^
with her old friend Adine, because she has just learned that Jura,
poor dear Jura, has been killed in the gun-room at Camelot by the
explosion of a rifle ho had taken down as unloaded.

‘‘ Everything is so dresRiful,” she says with a little sob and
shivcj;. “ Only to think that I cannot know my own daughter !
And then to have to wear one’s hair flat, and the bonnets are not
becoming, say what they like, and the season is so stupid ; and now
poor dear Jack has killed himself, Really killed himself, because
nobody liclieves about that rifle being an accident, he has been so
morosef and -so stran^j^ for years, and his- mother comes and re-
proaches me when it is all centuries ago, centuries ! and I am sure
% never did him anything but good I ”

412

MOTHS.

Other ladies come in, all great ladies, and some men, all j^oimg
men, and they have tea out of little yellow cups, and sip iced syrups,
and sit and talk of the death at Camelot as they chatter between
the fhur walls with the celebrated fans hung all over them, amidst
them the fan of Maria Teresa once sent to Felicite.

“She has so much to bear, and she is such a dear little
woman ! ” say all the friends of Lady Dolly. “ And it is very
dreadful for her not to be able to know her own daughter. She
always behaves beautifully about it, she is so kind, so sweet ! But
how can she ^now her, you know ? — divorced, and living out of
the world with Corroze I ”

So the moths eat the ermine ; and the world kisses the leper on
both cjieeks.

THE END.

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Puck. ^ By Ouida. Moths. By Ouida.

Folle Farine. By Ouida.

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20

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READT-MONET MORTIBOY. By W. Besant and James Rice.
JET LITTLE GIRL. By W. Besant and James Rice.

THE CASE OP ItfR. LUORAPT. By W. Besant and James Rice.
THIS SON OP VULCAN. By W. Besant and James Rice.
WITH HARP AND CROWN. By W. Besant and James Rice.
THE GOL*DEN BUTTERFLY. By W. Besant and James Rice.

With a Frontispiece by F. S. Walker.

BY CELIA’S ARBOUR. By W. Bksant and James Rice.

THS MONKS OP ifHELEMA. By W. Besant and JAMES Rick.
’T WAS IN TRAFALGAR’S BAY. By W. Besant & James Rice.
THE SEAMY SIDE. By Wai/I'ku Besant and James Rick.

ANTONINA. ' By Wilkie Collins, Illustrated by Sir J. Gilbert

and Alfrkd Concankn.

BASIL. By Wilkie Collins. Illustrated by Sir John Gilbert

and J. Maiionky.

HIDE AND SEEK. By Wilkie Collins. Illustrated by Sir

John Gildurt and J. Mahonby.

THE DEAD SECRET. By WlLKiE COLLINS. Illustrated by Sir

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QUEEN OP HEARTS. By Wilkie Collins. Illustrated by Sir

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MY MISCELLANIES. By Wilkie Collins. With Steel For-

trait, and Illustrations by A. Concanb:n.

THE WOMAN IN WHITE. By Wilkie Collins. Illustrated

by Sir J. Gilbert and F, A. Fraser.

THE MOONSTONE. By Wilkie Collins. ' Illustrated by G.

Du Maukihr and F. A. Fraser. ^

MAN AND WIFE. By Wilkie Collins. Illust. by Wm. Small.

POOR MISS FINCH. By Wilkie Collins. Illustrated by G.

Du Maukibr and Edward Hughes. *

MISS OR MRS. P By Wilkie Collins, Illustrated by S. L.

Fildks and Henry Woods* "

THE NEW MAGDALEN. By Wilkie Collins. Illustrated by

G. Du Maurikr and C. S. RsiNf^AKT.

THE FROZEN DEEP. By Wilkie Collins. Illustrated by G,

Du M^tJkiHKand J. Mahoney. * ^

THE LAW AND THE LADY. By Wilkie ColliSs. Illus-

trated by S. L. Fildes and Sydney Hall.

CHATTO W INDUS, PICCADILLY.

21

PICCADILLY N continued .

THE TWO DESTINIES. By Wilkie Collins.

THE HAUNTED HOTEL. By Wilkie Collins. Illustrated by

Arthur Hoi'kins.

THE FALLEN LEAVES. By Wilkie Collins.

DECEIVERS EVER. By Mrs. II. Lovett Camera n.
JULIET’S GUARDIAN. By Mrs. II. Lovett Cameron. Ulus-

tratedby Vai.kntink Bromley.

FELICIA. By M. Betham-Edwards. Frontispiece by W. Bowles.
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GARTH. By Julian IIawtiiornk.

IN LOVE AND WAR. By Chaulks Girbon.

WHAT WILL THE WORLD SAY ? By CiiARi.ES GiRiiON.

FOR THE KING. By Charles Gibbon.

IN HONOUR BOUND. By Charles Gibbon,

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. By Thomas Hardy.
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FATED TO BE FREE. By Jean Ingelow.

THE QUEEN OF CONNAUGHT. By Harriett Jay.

THE DARK COLLEEN. By Harriett Jay.

NUMBER SEVENTEEN. By Henry Kingsley.

OAKSHOTT CASTLE. By Henry Kingsley, With a Frontis-
piece by Shiklky Hodson.

THE WORLD WELL LOST. By E. Lynn Linton. Illustrated
by J. Lawson and Henky French.

THE ATONEMENT OF LEAM DUNDAS. By E. Lynn

Linton. With a Frontispiece by Henry Woods.

PATRICIA KEMBALL. By E. Lynn I-inton. With a Frontis-
piece by G. Du Ma#rier.

THE V#ATERDALE NEIGHBOURS. By Justin McCarthy.
MY ENEMY’S DAUGHTER. By Justin McCarthy.
LINLEY ROCHFORD. ^ By Justin McCarthy.

A FAIR SAXON. By Justin McCarthy.

DEAR LADY DISDAIN, By Justin McCarthy.

MISS MISANTHROPE. By Justin McCarthy. Illustrated by
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LOSf flOSE. By Katharine S. Macquoid.

THE EVID EYE, and other Stories. By Katharine S. Mac-

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I'HE BEST OP HUSBANDS. By James Payn. Illustrated by

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FALLEN FORTUNES. By James Payn.

HALVES. By James Payn. With a Frontispiece by J. Mahoney.
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WHAT HE COST HER. By James Payn.

LESS BLACK THAN WE’RE PAINTED. By James Payn.
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UNDER ONE ROOF. IJy James Payn.

HER MOTHER’S DARLING. By Mrs. J. II. Riuheli..
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GUY WATERMAN. By John Saunders.

ONE AGAINST THE WORLD. By John Saunders.

THE LION IN THE PATH. By John Saunders.

THE WAY WE LIVE NOW. By Anthony Troi.lovk. Illust.
THE AMERICAN SENATOR. By Anthony' Trollope.
DIAMOND CUT DIAMOND. By T. A. TuOLT.OrE.

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Popular Novels, Cheap Editions of.

[Wilkie Collins’ Novels and Bk.sant and Rick’.s Novels may also be had in
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Maid, Wife, or Widow? By I By Celia’s Arbour. I >y Walter
Mrs. Alexander. ! Besant and > | ames Kick.

Keady-Money Mortiboy. By (
Walter Besant and Jamp:s Rice, j
The Golden Butterfly. By Au-
thors of “ Ready- Money Mortiboy.”

This Son of Vulcan. By the same.
My Little Girl. By the same.

The Case of Mr. Lucraft. By
Authors of **Ready-MoneyMortiboy.”
With Harp and Crown. By
Autlior^of “Rcady-MoneyMortiboy,”
The Monks of Thelema. I3y

Walter Besant and James Rice.

’Twas in Trafalgar’s Spy. By
Wai.tkk Besant and Jame.s Rk f.
Juliet’s Guardian. By Mrs. IT.

Lovett Cameron.

Surly *Tim. By F. TT. Bttrnktt.
The Cure of Souls. By M^ac-

LARFN CoilliAN.

The Woman in White. By

Wilkie Collins.

Antonina. By WilktfX^li.tns.
Basil. By Wilkie Collins.
Hide and Seek. By the same.

CIIAITO dr- WINDUS, PICCADILLY.

23

, Popular Novels — contimied.

The Queen of Hearts. By

WiLKiK Collins.

The Dead Secret. By the same.
My Miscellanies. By the same.
The Moonstone. By the same.
Man and Wife. By tlie same.
Poor Miss Finch. By the same.
Miss or Mrs. P By the same.
TheNewMagdalen. By tJicsame.
The Frozen Deep, By the same.
The Law and the Lady. By

WiLKiK Collins,

The Two Destinies. By Wilkie

Collins.

The Haunted Hotel. By W ilkie

Collins.

Boxy. Jiy Edward Eggleston.
Felicia. M. Betiiam-Ed wards.
Filthy Lucre. By Alijany de

1*’0NIJLAN(.)UK.

Olympia. By R. E. P^rancillon.
Dick Temple. By James

(JkK1LNWO(»U.

Under the Greenwood Tree.

J’.y Thomas Hakdy.

An Heiress of Bed Dog. By

IIKICT HaUTK,

The Luck of Roaring Camp.

|’>y liKKT IJaktk.

Gabriel Conroy. Bret II arte.
Fated to be Free. By Jean

1 NCELOW.

CoiiMence. By JfENRY James,
The Queen of Connaught. By

IlAKKlETT Jay.

The Dark Colleen. By Har-
riett Jay.

Niimber Seventeen. By Henry

KingSlicy.

Oakshott Castle. By the same.
Patricia Kemball. By E. Lynn

Lin'J«)N.

.T h% Atonament of DeamDundas

liy E. Lynn Linton.

The World WeU Ldkt. By E.

Lynn Linton.

The Waterdale Neighbours.

By Justin McCarthy.

My Enemy’s Daughter. By

Justin ICIcCakthy. •

Linley Rochford. By the same.
A Fair Saxon. By the same.
DearLady Disdain. By the same.

Miss Misanthrope. • B>y J ustin
McCarthy.

Lost Rose. By Katii vrine S.

MaCQL'OID.

; The Evil Eye. By Katharine

I S. Macijuouj.

' Open! Sesame! By Florence
Makryat.

Whiteladies. Mrs. Oliphant.
Held in Bondage. By Ouida.

, Strathmore. By Ouida.

I Ohandos. By Ouida.
j Under Two Flags. By Ouida.
j Idalia. By Ouida.

I Cecil Castlemaine. By Ouida.
Tricotrin. liy Ouida.

Puck. By Ouida.

Folle Farine. By Ouida,

Dog of Flanders. By Ouida.
Pascarel. By Ouida.

Two Little Wooden Shoes. By
Ouida.

Signa. By Ouida.

In a Winter City. By Ouida.
Ariadne. By Ouida.

Fallen Fortunes. By J. Payn.
Halves . By J A M Es Pa y n .

What He Cost Her. IJy ditto.
By Proxy. Jiy James Payn.

^ess Black than We’re Painted.
By James Payn.

The Best of Husbancls, By

James Payn.

24

BOOKS PUBLISHED BY

Popular Novels — continued,

Walter'®^ Word. By J. Payn. I
The Mystery of Marie Iloget. \
By Edgar A. Poe.

Her Mother’s Barling. By Mrs.

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Gaslight and Daylight. By

^ George Augustus Sala.

Bound to'the Wheel. By John

Saunders.

Guy Waterman. J. Saunders.

One Against the World. By

John Saunders.

The Lion in the Path. By John

and Katherine Saunders.

Tales for the Marines. By

"W ALTER ThOENBUEY.

The Way we Live Now. By

Anthony Trollope.

The American Senator. By

Anthony Trollope.

Diamond Cut Diamond. By

T. A. Trollope.

An Idle Excursion. By Mark

Twain.

Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

By Mark Twain.

A Pleasure Trip on the Conti-

nent of Europe. By Mark Twain,

Fcap. 8vo, picture covers, u. each.

Jeff Briggs’s Love Story. By Bret Harte.

The Twins of Table Mountain. By Bret Harte.

Mrs. Gainsborough’s Diamonds. By Julian Hawthorne.
Kathleen Mavourneen. By the Author of “That I.ass o’ Lowrie’s.”
Lindsay’s Luck. By the Author of “ That Lass o’ Lowrie’s.”
Pretty Polly Pemberton. By Author of “ That Lass o’ Lowrie’s.”
Trooping with Crows. By Mrs. Pirkis.

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Plutarch’s Lives of Illustrious Men.

Translated from the Greek, with Notes, Critical and Historical, and a
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Crown 8vo, cloth extra, yr. bd.

Primitive Manners and Customs.

By James A. Farrer.

** A hook which is really both instructive and amusing^ eind which will open a
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An admirable c.x ample of the application of the scientific method and ike
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Prince of Argolis, The :

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Prout (Father), Thef Final Reliques of.

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Myths and Marvels of Astronomy. By Rich. A. Proctor,

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Pleasant Ways in Science. By Richard A. JProctor.*

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Rabelais’ Works.

Faithfully Translated from the French, with variorum Notes, and
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* II is buffoonery was not merely Brutus's rough skin, which contained a rod
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Stedman’s Victorian Poets:

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